The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane

In a short, wild, and mostly unhappy life, Harold Hart Crane (1899-1932) became -- Hart Crane -- a major figure in 20th Century American poetry whose reputation has grown with time. His life became the stuff of legend. Hart Crane left an unhappy home at the age of 17 to live in New York City and follow his dream to become a poet. Without any formal education -- he did not finish high school -- he used his inborn gifts and wide reading to quickly become important to New York's literary culture and community. His first book, White Buildings, is a collection of short, difficult imagistic poetry. His second book, The Bridge, is a lengthy poem offering a mystic, highly personal account of America, its past and its future, using the Brooklyn Bridge is its chief symbol.Crane's life was one of excess. From late adolesence, Crane drank heavily. He spent a great deal of time in underworld sex picking up sailors in the harbors of New York, all the while trying to conceal his sexual identity from his parents. Towards the end of his life, his behavior grew increasingly violent and self-destructive. He was jailed on several occasions in New York, Paris, and Mexico. Near the end, he did have what seems to be his only heterosexual relationship with Peggy Cowley, the divorced wife of the critic and publisher, Malcolm Cowley. Crane committed suicide when he returned with Peggy Cowley from Mexico in 1932 by jumping off the deck of a ship. He was all of 32.Published in 1999, Mariani's biography commenmorates the Centennial of Crane's birth. It gives a good detailed account Crane's life. The poetic focus of the book is The Bridge. (some critics see White Buildings as the stronger, more representative part of Crane's work.) Mariani shows how Crane conceived the idea of his long poem and how he worked on it fitfully over many years. He also shows the difficulty Crane had in completing the work at all -- given his alcoholism. sexual promiscuity, difficulty in supporting himself, and bad relationship with his separated parents. But complete the work Crane did. It presents a mythic, multi-formed vision of the United States stretching from the Indians to our day of technology. There is much to be gained from this poem. I have loved it for many years and Mariani's discussion of the poem and its lenghty creation is illuminating.Crane was a romantic in his life and art. Frequently, Mariani refers to him as the "last romantic", but this is an overstatement. I was reminded both by Crane's dissolute life and by his work of the beats -- particularly of Kerouac -- and the vision of America that they tried to articulate. With a Whitman-type vision of a mystical America encompassing all, the beats share and expand upon the romanticism of Hart Crane.Mariani's book covers well Crane's tortured relationship with his parents. It includes great discussions of literary New York City and of Crane's friends. It shows well how Crane was captivated by New York. We see

An extremely well written biography of Hart Crane, America's first great modern poet, recreates a fascinating time in the US when the artists of New York lived in cold water flats and drank prohibition liquor (Crane seems to have drank the most). The author deals with Crane's homosexuality as an integral part of his art (as it should be) which apparently has not been the case up until now. My only complaint is that there is too much made up dialogue between Crane and his friends. After awhile you begin to feel you have entered the land of fiction instead of biography. The author presents Crane's horrible relationship with his tyrannical father as the cause of much of his short life's misery.

I bought this book because I was having difficulty with understanding some of the passages in "The Bridge". Also, I wanted to know more about Hart Crane himself. Wow! I got a full plate with this biography by Paul Mariani. I ran the gamut of emotions reading this honest, solidly researched biography. The author offers his penetrating insights into Hart Crane as a poet and as a man. Occassionally Mariani's language gets flowery when discussing Crane and his considerable impact on poetry. That is easy to do considering the subject and his truly romantic view of his craft and the world. A brilliant job by Paul Mariani!

This is an extremely readable and enlightening bio of one of our greatest poets. The book falters slightly at the end, failing to surpass Unterecker's description of the last days in Mexico. There are also patches of purple prose and an apparent tendency to play fast and loose with the facts. Mr. Mariani makes many minor errors (e.g. Waldo Frank's City Block is a novel; H. P. Lovecraft was from Providence RI and the quotes are from his letters; Aaron Copeland was not present at the Greenwich Village party at which Crane read; etc.). He appears to have embellished, as well, as when he "quotes" Samuel Loveman as he foils a Crane suicide attempt. Mariani has invented the dialog. He also fails to note that the elderly Loveman was notoriously unreliable--the entire episode may be a fabrication. Taken individually, these errors mean little. Taken collectively, they indicate that this book must be approached with caution from a scholarly perspective. But it still makes a great read.

Born in Ohio, 100 years ago..died same day as E Hemingway.This bio is most significant treatment ever published. We have a 2 day observance in Pittsburgh in July at Andy Warhol Theatre/museum & hope author is avaiable--to sign his book there