Hart Crane is among the most radically inventive of High Modernist poets, experimenting with language and poetic scale in ways that extended the scope of Modernism and influenced several generations of American poets who followed him. Born in Garrettsville, Ohio in 1899, the only child of the successful businessman C.A. Crane and the flamboyant, expressive, and at times dominating Grace Hart, Crane endured what he described in letters as a difficult childhood. The marriage of C.A. and Grace was not a happy one, and young Harold would break with his father and choose his middle name, also his mother’s maiden name, as a symbolic gesture. While he saw his mother as more sympathetic to his artistic endeavors, his father would continue t

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First published 21 March 2003

Citation: Smith, Ernest J.. "Hart Crane". The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 March 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1058, accessed 20 November 2009.]