Harold Hart Crane (1899–1932) was an American poet whose work is distinguished by a remarkable degree of verbal and lyrical intensity, a poetry far more Dionysian in spirit than that of his American contemporaries. The son of a successful Ohio businessman, Crane was homosexual at a time when such an orientation was not acceptable. He acquired a serious alcohol problem and was an anguished spirit, but he was also the most ecstatic and mystical American poet of his generation. Returning from a year in Mexico under a Guggenheim Fellowship, Crane committed suicide by jumping from the SS Orizaba, the ship on which he was returning to the United States. ”My Grandmother’s Love Letters” was composed in 1919 and appeared in Crane’s 1926 collection White Buildings.
Harold Hart Crane (1899–1932) was an American poet whose work is distinguished by a remarkable degree of verbal and lyrical intensity, a poetry far more Dionysian in spirit than that of his American contemporaries. The son of a successful Ohio businessman, Crane was homosexual at a time when such an orientation was not acceptable. He acquired a serious alcohol problem and was an anguished spirit, but he was also the most ecstatic and mystical American poet of his generation. Returning from a year in Mexico under a Guggenheim Fellowship, Crane committed suicide by jumping from the SS Orizaba, the ship on which he was returning to the United States. ”My Grandmother’s Love Letters” was composed in 1919 and appeared in Crane’s 1926 collection White Buildings.
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