Talk:Hart Crane

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[edit] Guidelines

Greetings i know i can edit this but i want some guidlines

i know a great deal about hart crane and many others

but what does one add ?

what about previous article author?

This page needs a lot of critical scrutiny. As the page stands, the information reads anywhere from naive to untrue: "Setting himself against the modernist poetic ideals represented by T.S. Eliot, Crane wrote poetry that was traditional in form, obscure and often archaic in language, and which sought to affirm an optimistic approach to modern American life."

First, Crane's relationship cannot simply be said "against" Eliot, let alone Eliot's "modernist poetic ideals," (a phrase I find totally baffling in clarity and reference)(This phrase is incredibly arrogant.). Eliot's poetic ideals, with its resonance for the Elizabeth playwrights in vocabulary and Metaphysical poetry in its priority of wit over sentiment, these are in fact ideals that Crane himself synthesized and demonstrated to a greater capacity than any of the followers of Eliot. Nice Namedropping.

While I can accept "which sought to affirm an optimistic approach to modern American life," this is true, I think this too needs to be fleshed out in the article, and this sentence "traditional in form, obscure and often archaic in language" while 'glancing' upon characteristics of Crane's verse seems to be dangerously misleading - obscurantism and archaism are two things Crane deplored even as his some readers believed he verged upon, or simply was.

Generally speaking, the page needs to be divided (as other author pages are) into life and works, with more attention focused to specific works of Crane that helped established his legitimacy as one of the foremost American poets that have ever written. This would include "To Brooklyn Bridge," "Repose of Rivers," "Voyages" (the entire sequence), "For the Marriage of Faustus & Helen", and of course his great death-ode "The Broken Tower."

"The partial failure of the poem had something to do with his increased alcoholism": even if this were true it is miserably vague. I for one do not find it true, since the Bridge's reception is what cemented early on its critical reputation as simultaneously glorious and a failure.

Crane was not simply trying to write an epic, though he did on occasion compare "The Bidge" to Virgil's The Aeneid. What's your point, Professor Windbag?

Okay, we need more discussion and attention and scholarly savvy brought to bear here. Adam Fitzgerald 16:21, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

First of all, please sign your posts. Second, I have tried to correct some of the things to which you (rightly) object. Finally, don't read into the article things that aren't there. "Archaic" is not the same as "affected," and the article nowhere says that Crane was only trying to write an epic. You do agree, I hope, that he was, among other things, trying to write an epic? Hydriotaphia 00:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look and lending a trim, Hydriotaphia. I have to laugh at the presumption of reading things into the article that aren't there, because that's exactly my complaint about the current standards of the piece for Hart Crane (it leaves a lot desired to be read in, to fill the void, to fix the mistakes or slants).

1st: Of course! "Archaic" is going to be synonymous with "Affected" when it appears in the same sentence with "obscure" - as if Crane was trying his best to lead readers away from any appropriable cognitive meaning. That is fixed, however, and that helps de-contextualize what connotatively was encircling "archaic" before.

2nd: The problem concerning the epic-fiasco is this, I'm assuming you are familiar with many of the New Critics (Winters, Tate, then descendents like Blackmur and many contemporary critics) who followed Yvor Winters in slamming "The Bridge" as a "failed epic," a stigma that has lasted and helped seem to legitimate baffled readers who can't for the life of them how the hell the lyrics are supposed to be read in a synthetic, organized sequence. So (like Winters) they concoct a standard that "The Bridge" should live up to, "epic," an aesthetic category familiar and vague enough to expect narrative elements that Crane's work painfully eschews, or re-defines to say the least. The charge that Crane was writing an epic is something he vehemently railed against in letter with Winters after the review, and while I myself do not think the language of the article was trying to be hostile and condescending by saying "epic" - much of the language of the article's discussion or appraisal of the poems in "The Bridge" seems marred by criticisms as old as Winters' review, and unfortunately still alive.

That said, I am not upset with any person or article writers helping Wikipedia fix this one particular article. And I do realize I am bringing perhaps too much weight to bear, but it would be nice to see one scholarly article on Crane avoid some of the pitfalls, traps, reductions that plagued the man in his life and have chased his work after his death. Adam Fitzgerald 16:21, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I understand your frustration with this article. It does need to be improved. I'm especially sympathetic to your second point. In Harold Bloom's introduction to the "centennial" (1899-1999) edition of the Complete Poems, he makes a similar point. I'll add his quote when I have time. Anyway, we do seem to be in agreement that Crane is one of the greatest American poets ever to have written, and sadly undervalued. Hydriotaphia 17:25, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "...effectively committing suicide."

How does one "effectively" commit suicide? To put that another way, is it possible to commit suicide ineffectively? (Yes, I suppose it is, and I suppose Crane did it effectively, but it's still bad writing). PiCo 16:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phrasing of sentences.

In the third paragraph there are two sentences I feel are somewhat harsh; "Crane was homosexual. Part of his love for New York may have sprung from its tolerance as well as its thriving gay subculture." The first sentence seems like an attack on Hart Crane for his homosexuality. The second sentence seems unencyclopedic in that it appears as an opinion and has no support/evidence. Being related to Heart Crane, I feel that the first sentence needs to be euphemized in order to come off less offensive. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by policeGIRL (talk • contribs).

Are you related to Hart Crane or Heart Crane? - Daniel P

I agree that the speculation about his attraction to New York needs a source, otherwise it looks like original research. The first sentence seems fine to me: clear, straightforward. Stumps 05:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)