Happy Birthday, Hart Crane!

Crane's plaque in Charles Street, Greenwich Village

The poet Hart Crane, about whom I am currently writing my PhD thesis, would have been 112 today. He was born in Garrettsville, Ohio, and lived much of his peripatetic life in New York City. Crane published two collections of poetry in his lifetime: White Buildings (1926), and The Bridge (1930).

The 1985 statue of Crane by William McVey, which stands near Kelvin Smith Library in Cleveland

The final section of White Buildings contains a six-part suite of love poems entitled 'Voyages', partly inspired by his relationship with Emil Opffer, a merchant sailor. The second of these can be read here.

The Bridge is a long sequence of poems that explores American history and myth, taking in figures such as Columbus, Rip Van Winkle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman along the way. The poem begins and ends on Brooklyn Bridge, and the opening part, a dedication to the Bridge, is here.

Brooklyn Bridge, 1925

In 1932, on his way back from Mexico, Crane threw himself off the S.S. Orizaba and was drowned. You can read more of Crane's poems at his Academy of American Poets page, and more about his life and work at the Modern American Poetry page prepared by Edward Brunner.