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Harold Hart Crane by Michele Price

Harold Hart Crane was born on July 21, 1899 in Garretsville, Ohio to Clarence Arthur Crane and Grace Hart Crane. Growing up, Crane's parents fought constantly and eventually separated. Crane then went to live with his grandmother and dropped out of East High School in Cleveland in 1916. Crane was a good student, however, his grades suffered because of extensive absences due to family matters. Crane was also a homosexual, which caused him and his father's relationship to sufficiently decline as he grew older. After dropping out of East High, Crane went to live in New York in 1916 with intentions of attending Columbia University. Once he dismissed all efforts of attending a university, Crane began to study the works of Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ezra Pound on his own. In this same year, 1916, Crane published an article titled "Bruno's Weekly" in a New York newspaper. Soon Crane became a "meticulous craftsman, seeking not to break with but to follow the central tradition in poetry, and he srove to eliminate obscurity".(Unger 382). Crane became considered one of the greatest lyric poets of his generation. Crane soon developed a challenge for himself. He wanted to be able to challenge the imagination, compel judgement, and express his sexuality through his works. His poems were often sprinkled with private symbolism and emotions of particular words. Crane was more concerend with the connotations and associations inspired by words rather than the actual definitions. Repeatedly throughout his poems Crane expounded and sometimes practiced irrationalism and mysticism. He often expressed, in his early poems, a common theme of gods and goddesses. Crane enjoyed the "depth of feeling and delicacy of verbal manipulation and a confident power of execution " that he used in his poetry. (Trachtenberg 102). Crane lived through the roaring twenties and shared a common notion among American people of making quick money by writing a scenario or a popular story. His poems inspired many and often provided the text for many sermons and the ground for many controversies over his sexuality. Many homosexual cults have considered Hart Crane their hero and patron. Crane eventually developed increasing hardships with his father and turned to drinking, causing many to consider his poetry a failure. Crane also engaged in his first heterosexual relationship with Peggy Baird when he leapt to his death off the deck of the //Orizaba// on their sail back to New York from Mexico. Many people were shocked to learn that Crane commited suicide in the Gulf of Mexico on April 27, 1932. Forty years after his tragic suicide many can "say that his work survives all the contemporary disputes and passions and that inspite of its small bulk and its obvious limitations and defects, it will remain among the permanent treasures of American poetry in the twentieth century".(Unger 384).

Brook, J.M."Hart Crane." DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Betroit: Gale 2003. Student Resource Ceter-Gold. Gale. Fuquay-Varina High School/WCPS/.20 May.2008 .

The Gale-Gold Database was very easy to use. It is outlined by a search method, where once and author is typed in, it locates articles and DISCovering Authors online books. This format was easily researchable and I plan on using the critical essay "Hart Crane" to find three publications, a quote, and awards recieved by Crane for my trading card. This is a very good database, however, I do recommend more detail on the awards and achievements of Crane during his lifetime because they are very limited in this critical essay.

"Crane, (Harold) Hart (1899-1932)." DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Gale. Fuquay Varina High School/WCPS/. 22 May. 2008 http://www.galenet.com/servlet/srcx.

The Gale-Gold Database was very easy to use. It is outlined by a search method, where once an author is typed in, it locates articles and DISCovering Authors online books. I used the narrative biliography "(Harold) Hart Crane" to find awards and accomplishments of Crane. I also plan on using this site for more details on Crane's life and his affects on American society. The format of this bibliography was very easy to use because there were sub-headings which allowed easy location of what I needed to find. I would recommend that this site go into more detail about Crane's life because it is a narrative bibliography and it is very short, lacking great detail about Crane's life.

Savage, Derek. "The Americanism of Hart Crane." __Hart Crane.__ Ed. Alan Trachtenberg. Eglewood Cliffs: Liverigh Publishing Company, 1966. 25-36.

The book __Hart Crane : A collection of critical essays__ is outlined in the table of contents by different evaluations of Crane by different critics. I used "The Americanism of Hart Crane" by Derek Savage to depict Crane's themes in his works and to further evaluate Crane's life. The book gave great detail and a wide variety of information about Crane from his childhood to his tragic suicide. I would recommend some pictures to the book; pictures of Garrettsville, Ohio where Crane was born or pictures of some books that Crane published would suffice. This would help researches fully grasp who Crane was by seeing what Crane was surrounded by when he was alive.

Unger, Leonard. "Hart Crane." __American Writers__. Ed. Charles Scribner's Sons. University of Minnesota: 1974. 381-404

The reference book __American Writers, edition I__ contains a variety of many different authors from Henry Adams to T. S. Eliot. Hart Crane is located from pages 381 to 404. The section on Hart Crane tells of his background, simplistically, and evaluates many of Crane's works. I plan on using this source to find Crane's vision and contributions to America. This section was very wordy about Crane's works, however, I recommend that it give more detail about Crane's life. This was the first source I used and I was very confused when reading that he was homosexual and committed suicide when there was no detailed description of the events.