No American poet has so swiftly and decisively transformed the course of
poetry as Hart Crane. In his haunted, brief life, Crane fashioned a
distinctively modern idiom that fused the ornate rhetoric of the
Elizabethans, the ecstatic enigmas of Rimbaud, and the prophetic
utterances and cosmic sympathy of Whitman, in a quest for wholeness and
healing in what he called "the broken world."
White Buildings, perhaps the greatest debut volume in American poetry
since Leaves of Grass, is but an exquisite prelude to Crane's
masterpiece The Bridge, his magnificent evocation of America from
Columbus to the Jazz Age that countered the pessimism of Eliot's The
Waste Land and became a crucial influence on poets whose impact
continues to this day.
This edition is the largest collection of Crane's writings ever
published. Gathered here are the complete poems and published prose,
along with a generous selection of Crane's letters, several of which
have never before been published. In his letters Crane elucidates his
aims as an artist and provides fascinating glosses on his poetry.
His voluminous correspondence also offers an intriguing glimpse into his
complicated personality, as well as his tempestuous relationships with
family, lovers, and writers such as Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor
Winters, Jean Toomer, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos
Williams, and Katherine Anne Porter. Several letters included here are
published for the first time.
This landmark 850-page volume features a detailed and freshly-researched
chronology of Crane's life as well as extensive explanatory notes, and
over fifty biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
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printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
