Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. He was influenced by Romantic poets and other Modernist writers. Crane wrote poetry that was highly detailed and often difficult to understand. His collection White Buildings (1926), which included poems such as "Chaplinesque," "At Melville's Tomb," "Repose of Rivers," and "Voyages," helped establish him as an important figure in the innovative literary movement of his time. His long poem The Bridge (1930) was inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge.

Crane was born in Garrettsville, Ohio, to Clarence A. Crane and Grace Edna Hart. He left East High School in Cleveland during his junior year and moved to New York City, promising his parents he would later attend Columbia University. He worked in jobs such as copywriting and advertising. In the early 1920s, small but respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s poems, which earned him recognition among innovative writers. His goal to combine elements of American culture was shown in The Bridge, which he intended as a hopeful response to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). Some critics praised the poem’s scope, while others criticized its quality. On April 27, 1932, Crane jumped off the steamship USS Orizaba into the Atlantic Ocean while the ship was traveling from Vera Cruz to New York via Havana, Cuba. He did not leave a suicide note, but witnesses believed he intentionally ended his life. Crane had multiple homosexual relationships, many of which influenced his poetry. He had one known female partner, Peggy Cowley, about a year before his death.

Opinions about Crane’s work were divided. Poets like Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens criticized his work, while others, such as William Carlos Williams and E. E. Cummings, praised it. William Rose Benét wrote that Crane did not create a truly great poem with The Bridge but that his work showed strong abilities that could lead to future success. His final work, "The Broken Tower" (1932), was unfinished and published after his death. Crane has been praised by many writers and critics, including Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Bloom. Bloom called Crane "a High Romantic in the era of High Modernism." Allen Tate described Crane as "one of those men whom every age seems to select as the spokesman of its spiritual life; they give the age away."

Life

Hart Crane was born on July 21, 1899, in Garrettsville, Ohio, to Clarence A. Crane and Grace Edna Hart. His father was a successful businessman and restaurant owner who created the Life Savers candy and held the patent, but sold it for $2,900 before the brand became popular. He also made other candies and earned money from selling chocolate bars. Clarence Crane’s sister, Alice Crane Williams, was a composer and editor. His aunt, Zell Hart Deming, gave money to help support his early career.

In 1894, the family moved to Warren, Ohio, where his father opened a maple syrup company. He sold the company in 1908 to Corn Products Refining Company. In April 1911, his father started a chocolate manufacturing and retailing business called the Crane Chocolate Company. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1911, and lived at 1709 East 115th Street. In 1913, Clarence Crane’s parents bought the house across the street.

Hart Crane began attending East High School around 1913–1914.

He has woven rose-vines
About the empty heart of night,
And vented his long mellowed wines
Of dreaming on the desert white
With searing sophistry.
And he tented with far truths he would form
The transient bosoms from the thorny tree.
O Materna! to enrich thy gold head
And wavering shoulders with a new light shed
From penitence, must needs bring pain,
And with it song of minor, broken strain.
But you who hear the lamp whisper through night
Can trace paths tear-wet, and forget all blight.

Crane’s first published work was the poem “C33,” which appeared in the Greenwich journal Bruno’s Weekly in 1917 in a section titled “Oscar Wilde: Poems in His Praise.” The poem is named after Oscar Wilde’s cell in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and his name was misspelled as “Harold H Crone” in print. The style he later used in his books can be seen in poems from this time. Crane dropped out of East High School in Cleveland during his junior year in December 1916 and left for New York City, promising his parents he would later attend Columbia University. His parents were going through a divorce and were upset about his decision. Crane took copywriting jobs and lived in friends’ apartments in Manhattan. For a time, he rented a room at 25 East 11th Street from a motion-picture scriptwriter named Mrs. Walton, who encouraged his writing. His parents divorced on April 14, 1917. That same year, he tried to join the military but was rejected because he was still a minor.

He worked in a munitions plant until the end of World War I. Between 1917 and 1924, he moved back and forth between New York and Cleveland, working as an advertising copywriter and in his father’s factory. In 1925, he briefly lived with Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate. They asked him to leave because of the mess his belongings made and because of disagreements over T. S. Eliot’s work. He wrote to his mother and grandmother in the spring of 1924:

Just imagine looking out your window directly on the East River with nothing between your view of the Statue of Liberty, far down the harbor, and the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge close above you on your right! All the great new skyscrapers of lower Manhattan are across from you, and there is a constant stream of tugs, liners, sail boats, and others on the river! It’s really a magnificent place to live. This section of Brooklyn is very old, but all the houses are in good condition and have not been taken over by foreigners…

Based on Crane’s letters, New York was where he felt most comfortable. Much of his poetry was inspired by life there.

Throughout the early 1920s, many respected literary magazines published Crane’s poems, earning him recognition among avant-garde writers. This recognition was later confirmed by the 1926 publication of White Buildings. On May 1, 1926, Crane went to Isla de la Juventud to stay in his mother’s family home there. He received a contract from Liveright Publishing to publish White Buildings in July. White Buildings includes many of Crane’s most well-received poems, such as “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen” and “Voyages,” a series of erotic poems. These were written while he was falling in love with Emil Opffer, a Danish merchant mariner, and “Voyages” is generally considered to be about their relationship. “Faustus and Helen” was part of Crane’s effort to respond to modern life with something other than despair. He believed T. S. Eliot’s work, such as The Waste Land, was too bleak and refused to see “certain spiritual events and possibilities.” Crane aimed to bring those spiritual events to poetic life and create “a mystical synthesis of America.” Edmund Wilson said Crane had “a style that is strikingly original—almost something like a great style, if there could be such a thing as a great style which was … not … applied to any subject at all.”

Crane returned to New York in 1928 after a hurricane damaged the Cuban home. He lived with friends, took temporary copywriting jobs, or relied on unemployment and the help of friends and his father. For a time, he lived in Brooklyn at 77 Willow Street until his lover, Opffer, invited him to live in Opffer’s father’s home at 110 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights. Crane was happy with the views from that location.

The first known mention of The Bridge was in a 1923 letter to Gorham Munson, in which he wrote:

I am ruminating on a new longish poem under the title of

Writing

Hart Crane was greatly influenced by T. S. Eliot, especially his poem The Waste Land. Crane's work The Bridge aimed to show a more hopeful view of society compared to The Waste Land. He first read The Waste Land in the November 1922 issue of The Dial.

Walt Whitman, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson also had a strong influence on Crane. As a teenager, he read works by Plato, Honoré de Balzac, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Most of Crane's critical writing appears in his letters. He regularly wrote to Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, and Gorham Munson. He also had critical conversations with Eugene O’Neill, William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, Sherwood Anderson, Kenneth Burke, Waldo Frank, Harriet Monroe, Marianne Moore, and Gertrude Stein. He knew H. P. Lovecraft, who later expressed concern about Crane’s health due to alcohol use. Many editions of Crane’s poetry include selections from his letters. Two of his most famous stylistic explanations came from letters: his "General Aims and Theories" (1925) was written to encourage Eugene O’Neill to write a foreword for White Buildings, though it was never published during Crane’s lifetime. His "Letter to Harriet Monroe" (1926) was part of a discussion about publishing the poem "At Melville’s Tomb" in Poetry.

Crane’s most quoted criticism appears in the long, unpublished essay "General Aims and Theories." He wrote: "The motivation of a poem comes from the emotions tied to the materials used. Words are often chosen more for their associations than their literal meanings. Through these connections, the poem is built on a 'logic of metaphor,' which is older than our modern logic and forms the basis of all speech, thought, and understanding."

He also mentioned this idea in a letter to Harriet Monroe: "The logic of metaphor is deeply rooted in human experience and cannot be fully explained without studying subjects like history and language." L. S. Dembo, in his book Hart Crane's Sanskrit Charge (1960), compared Crane’s "logic of metaphor" to the ideas of the Romantic poets, explaining that it reflects the creative power of imagination and the way symbols convey meaning beyond their literal sense.

The willows carried a slow sound,
A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.
I could never remember
That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
Till age had brought me to the sea.

The publication of White Buildings was delayed because Eugene O’Neill struggled to write a foreword for it. Many critics later dismissed Crane’s work, claiming it was too difficult to understand. O’Neill did write a draft foreword, stating that Crane’s style was the main challenge for readers. The publisher Harcourt rejected White Buildings, with one editor calling it "the most perplexing kind of poetry." A young Tennessee Williams, who admired Crane’s work, said he could not understand individual lines, but he believed the overall effect of the poem conveyed meaning. Crane himself knew his poetry was hard to read. Some of his essays were written as letters to editors, friends, and supporters, explaining his style or apologizing for its complexity. His exchange with Harriet Monroe at Poetry, when she refused to publish "At Melville’s Tomb," led him to describe his "logic of metaphor" in writing:

"If the poet must only use already known images and ideas, how can poetry offer new ways of thinking or seeing the world? Shouldn’t artists be allowed to use shorthand-like language to connect ideas and create new understanding?"

Monroe did not support this idea, but she printed the exchange alongside the poem:

"You test metaphors and poetic ideas too much with logic, while I push logic to the edge in search of emotion."

Crane had a well-developed way of explaining his poetry. In "General Aims and Theories," he wrote:

"New ways of living create new ways of expressing ideas. If poetry is to speak about the present, it must sometimes use unusual or confusing language that may challenge scholars and historians."

As a child, Crane had a romantic relationship with a man.

Since the late 20th century, critics have suggested reading Crane’s poems—such as The Broken Tower, My Grandmother’s Love Letters, and the Voyages series—with attention to possible homosexual meanings. Queer theorist Tim Dean argues that Crane’s complex style was partly due to the challenges of being a semi-public homosexual, not fully open but also not hidden. He explains that Crane’s difficulty in writing was tied to both language and the cultural pressures of his time.

Thomas Yingling disagrees with traditional interpretations of Crane’s work, arguing that focusing on "American myth" and formalist readings has made it harder to see the value of homosexual readings. He points to the final lines of My Grandmother’s Love Letters as a powerful example of feeling disconnected from traditional family life:

"Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter."

Brian Reed has worked to combine queer criticism with other methods, arguing that focusing too much on Crane’s personal life can distract from the broader value of his work. In one example, he analyzed Crane’s poem Voyages (a love poem to his lover Emil Opffer) by focusing only on the text itself, without adding political or cultural context.

In mid-December 1926, Crane visited William Murrell Fisher in Woodstock, a literary critic he met through their mutual friend Gorham Munson.

Influence

Hart Crane was admired by many artists and writers, including Eugene O'Neill, Kenneth Burke, Edmund Wilson, E. E. Cummings, Tennessee Williams, and William Carlos Williams. Although some people, like Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound, criticized Crane's work, Moore did publish his poems. T. S. Eliot also published Crane's work. Eliot may have used some of Crane's ideas in his poem "Four Quartets," especially in the beginning of "East Coker," which is similar to a part of Crane's poem "The River" from The Bridge.

Yvor Winters and Allen Tate both praised Crane's book White Buildings but believed The Bridge was not successful.

Mid-20th century American poets, such as John Berryman and Robert Lowell, said Crane had a major influence on their work. Both Berryman and Lowell wrote poems about Crane. Berryman included one of his famous elegies about Crane in The Dream Songs. Lowell wrote a poem titled "Words for Hart Crane" in Life Studies (1959), saying, "Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age, / must lay his heart out for my bed and board." Lowell believed Crane was the most important American poet of the 1920s generation, stating that Crane "got out more than anybody else" and was "at the center of things" in a way no other poet was. Lowell also said Crane was "less limited than any other poet of his generation."

Tennessee Williams said he wanted to be "given back to the sea" at the same point where Hart Crane gave himself back to the sea. One of Williams's last plays, a "ghost play" called Steps Must Be Gentle, explores Crane's relationship with his mother.

In a 1991 interview with Antonio Weiss of The Paris Review, literary critic Harold Bloom said that Hart Crane and William Blake first sparked his interest in literature when he was a child. He remembered reading a line from Crane's poetry that left a strong impression on him: "O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commits / The agile precincts of the lark's return." Bloom described Crane's style as powerful and dramatic, like the works of the poet Christopher Marlowe. He still keeps a copy of Crane's collected poems, which he received as a gift from his sister in 1942. Bloom also said Crane was the only 20th-century poet he would consider more important than Yeats or Stevens. Bloom wrote the introduction to the centennial edition of The Complete Poems of Hart Crane.

Thomas Lux once said, "If the devil came to me and said 'Tom, you can be dead and Hart can be alive,' I'd take the deal in a heartbeat if the devil promised Hart would go to A.A. after being brought back to life."

Literary critic Adam Kirsch said Crane was a special case in American modernist literature, and his reputation was never as strong as that of Eliot or Stevens.

In 2011, poet Gerald Stern wrote an essay about Crane, saying some people focus on Crane's difficult life, including his drinking and personal struggles, but Crane created poetry that was "tender, attentive, wise, and radically original" even though he died at 32. Stern also said Crane's work continues to influence him, writing, "Crane is always with me," and that Crane's voice and style have shaped his own writing.

Crane's death also inspired works by artist Jasper Johns, including Periscope, Land's End, and Diver. His poem The Bridge inspired the composition A Symphony of Three Orchestras by Elliott Carter. Another artist, Marsden Hartley, created the painting Eight Bells' Folly, Memorial for Hart Crane to honor Crane.

Depictions

The film The Broken Tower, released in 2011, is an American student film directed, written, and acted in by actor James Franco. The film was part of Franco’s final project for his master’s degree in filmmaking at New York University. He created the story based on Paul Mariani’s 1999 nonfiction book The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane. Although it was made as a student film, The Broken Tower was shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2011 and was released on DVD in 2012 by Focus World Films.

The character Crane also appears in the short story Atlantis: Model 1924 by Samuel R. Delany and in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a book series written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.