Thursday, February 24, 2011

Hart Crane

I know many of you found parts of Hart Crane's The Bridge hard to understand, and that, my friends, is totally normal. I told you a bit about Crane's biography and his poetic "ancestry" (to Whitman, he believed); Tyler also gave you some information about Crane's life. We haven't spoken explicitly about "modernist" poetry, but I want you to do a little web-searching and tell me here what you've come to learn about how Crane's style is or is not reflective of some of the features of modernist poetry of the 1920s. Give me the URL in your response here and your own summary. Then, if you wish, make a connection if you can between Crane's style and his biography -- I know it might be a stretch, but how does the challenge of his style reveal to us anything about Crane himself?

11 comments:

  1. According to an analysis provided by Margaret Dickie (http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/craneh.html), Hart Crane can be defined as a modernist poet due to his use of lengthy narrative, reinvented metaphor, and “American” ideals that permeate each of his poems. According to Dickie, because Crane did adopt a long narrative similar to the forms of T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound, this demonstrates his attempts to merge into the modernist society using one of the common structural themes of the time. Furthermore, Crane also broke away from classical poetic standards by reinventing the metaphor in a whimsical format previously unheard of by some of his fellow poets. His wild and sometimes illogical use of language and form allowed Crane to break away from molds he felt were too strict for describing a blossoming industrial society. Instead, Crane allowed variations in classical form and language to reflect the new and exciting explorations that were going on around him. Finally, in what are considered by Dickie to be the most persuasive indications of a modernist poet, are Crane’s uniquely “American” themes that pervade each of his texts. Instead of concentrating on international developments, as was typical of classical writers, Crane’s allusions reference only American ideals and beliefs, making the poem unique to its time and place.
    Typically, American modernist poetry was scattered and avant-garde in terms of its form and use of language. It is reasonable to suggest that, because Crane has such a tumultuous and fractured life, the lack of form that modernist poetry had to offer best suited his artistic needs, as it best reflected the mental and social fragmentation and alienation he faced on a daily basis.

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  2. From my understanding of what modern poetry is, I would say that due to the difficulty of understanding Hart Crane’s work, he qualifies as a modernist poet. One of the main goals of the modernist style was to extend the audience from the educated and politically informed to the masses. This expansion required additional thought on the part of the reader, who may not be as informed about social and political intricacies as those of a higher social class. Another attribute of Modernist poetry is the desire to do things that have not been done before. I have not read a lot of poetry and so thus can’t say much about whether a technique has been done before, but Heart Cranes writing seems to adhere to this style due to his use of slightly illogical metaphors and strange language overall.

    My understanding of modernist poetry was enhanced by http://department.monm.edu/english/mew/modernist_poetry.htm

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  3. It seem that Crane's write was effected by his constant movement. Moving to and from New York and Cleveland and going to Cuba, Europe and Mexico, this change of environment change his perspective of the write and slow him down in finishing "The Bridge." It took him several year to finish it and he was moving still. Some can also say Crane's hard childhood is the cause the writing style for "The Bridge," with his parents divorce and informal education. this definitely can traumatize a kid.

    http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/crane/bio.htm

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  4. In all of the research I did for the literary analysis of Hart Crane I found that people consider him a modernist poet. This of course is very appropriate for Crane. His poetry was very modern for his time as far as it being different from the usual poetry form. Crane was different. Not only was he a homosexual during a time when such was very frowned upon, he was also breaking literary forms that people had been stuck to for a long time. Crane was an outsider, his writing and lifestyle reflected this. He was a very progressive writeer and wrote profoundly with different, modernist, form.

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  5. Hart Crane's poetry consisting of ornate and semi-antiquated language lies in juxtaposition with the modernist movement, whose aim was to try and refocus poetry upon concise and accessible text which contained a minimum of overly descriptive or 'useless' adjectives. This is in direct contrast to Crane who, drawing creative inspiration from Whitman, used a very diverse vocabulary, to the point where meaning became obscured or nonsensical, and wrote incredibly long works which also is not necessarily a part of the modernist movement. In terms of Crane as a poet himself, his style demonstrates that he does not necessarily attempt to prescribe meaning to the reader but rather a type of world play which enlightens a person through a form indirect and self-discovered meaning and visualization.

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  6. ^^ Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernist_poetry_in_English

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  7. Crane's poetry is made up of words that were used in the 16th and 17th centry. It was a way to show that modern poetry is just as approiate as older forms of poetry, which makes it difficult for new readers to understand words that may no longer be used.

    http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hart_Crane

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  8. As a quick Google search for 'Heart Crane modernist' shows, many people believe Heart Crane to be a modernist. The particular source I read (link below), questioned however his commitment to modernism, noting that while he was interested and used modernist techniques, he did not believe in all their ideas. The primary example the source gives is that Crane's work isn't pessemistic about the modern world, as many other modernist's works are, but rather more hopeful about the era he was apart of.

    http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit11/authors-2.html

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