Letters of Hart Crane, The

Weber, Brom (Edited by)

Published by hermitage house inc., New York

About this Item

BOOK: Corners, Spine Bumped; Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Edges Lightly Soiled; Moderate Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Repaired; Lightly Creased; Heavily Chipped; Moderate Yellowing Due to Age; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. The imaged Word, it is, that holds; Hushed willows anchored in its glow. It is the unbetrayable reply; Whose accent no farewell can know. "Of the poets who came into prominence during the 1930's in America, none is more likely to achieve an immortality than Harold Hart Crane," said Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska in their history of American poetry. SUB-TITLE: 1916-1932. FRONTISPIECE: The frontispiece is taken from a photograph of Crane by Hervey Minns, a winner of international prizes, whom Crane found living in obscurity in Akron and began to tout to the art magazines, as told in his letters. CONTENTS: Preface; Chronology; PART ONE Ohio (1916-1922); PART TWO New York (1923-1925); PART THREE West Indies-Europe (1926-1930); PART FOUR Mexico (1931-1932); List of Correspondents; Index. SYNOPSIS: Here are 405 letters written by Hart Crane - who has been acclaimed as the greatest American poet since Whitman and Emily Dickinson - to prominent figures of the renascence of the 1920s. Among those addressed are Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Stieglitz, Gaston Lachaise, and Otto Kahn. The letters trace the course of Crane's turbulent life from his confident youth to the stop at Havana before he jumped off the stern of a liner in the Caribbean. When he was 17, Crane wrote his father: "I realize . . . I am preparing for a fine life; that I have powers, which, if correctly balanced will enable me to mount to extraordinary latitudes." His powers did indeed mature and soon attracted the notice of Eugene O'Neill who declared that "Hart Crane's poems are profound and deep-seeking." Crane entered madly into the carousing spirit of the Nineteen Twenties. "Nothing could beat the hilarity of this place," he wrote his mother in 1925; "with about an omnibus full of people here from New York and a case of gin, to say nothing of jugs of marvellous hard cider . . . You should have seen the dances I did - one all painted up like an African cannibal . . . We went swimming at midnight, climbed trees, played blind man's buff, rode in wheel-barrows and gratified every caprice for three days." But in 1932 in Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship, Crane was critical of his roistering. "I'm just a careening idiot, with a talent for humor at times, and for insult and desecration at others." Three months later as the ship's whistle blew noon, he dove into the sea. In an epic poem, "The Bridge," Crane attempted to create a myth for America. In a long series of letters to Waldo Frank, he told about his progress with "The Bridge," and threw light upon his intentions. In another long series of letters to Gorham Munson he discussed many of his early poems which appeared in his first volume, White Buildings. Besides revealing much about himself, Crane's letters also trace the lineaments of his period. To Allen Tate, Selden Rodman, and many other friends, he wrote freely about his judgments on the literature and trends of the time. "The record of Crane's days," says Brom Weber who edited this book, "vibrates with an explosive terror . . . elated, wretched, violent, Rabelaisian." - and - Five years after Crane's death appeared the first biography of this genius. In 1948 came the second biography, Hart Crane: A Biographical and Critical Study, by Brom Weber, who studied the great mass of Crane correspondence in preparing to write it. He has now selected 405 letters for the definitive edition of Crane's letters. "Critic Weber," said Time, "is lucid, levelheaded, candid, and seems likely to become a very welcome addition to the small list of serious U.S. critics." Brom Weber graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1938. He has worked as a writer-editor for various government agencies and has taught at the Rand . . . Size: Seller Inventory # 002534

Bibliographic Details

Title: Letters of Hart Crane, The

Publisher: hermitage house inc., New York

Binding: Hard Cover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Good

Edition: First Edition