Harold Hart Crane was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T.S.Eliot , Crane wrote modernist poetry that is difficult, highly stylized, and very ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem in the vein of The Waste Land that expressed something more sincere and optimistic than the ironic despair that Crane found in Eliot's poetry. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has come to be seen as one of the most influential poets of his generation. By 1922 Crane had already written many of the poems that would comprise his first collection, White Buildings. Among the most important of these verses is "Chaplinesque," which he produced after viewing the great comic Charlie Chaplin's film "The Kid." In this poem Chaplin's chief character—a fun-loving, mischievous tramp—represents the poet, whose own pursuit may be perceived as trivial but is nonetheless profound. For Crane, the film character's optimism and sensitivity bears similarities to poets' own outlooks toward adversity, and the tramp's apparent disregard for his own persecution is indication of his innocence: "We will sidestep, and to the final smirk / Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb / That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, / Facing the dull squint with what innocence / And what surprise!"
In the years since his death, Crane has earned recognition as an ambitious and accomplished—if not entirely successful—poet, one whose goals vastly exceeded his capabilities (and, probably, anyone else's) but whose talent nonetheless enabled him to explore the limits of self-expression both provocatively and profoundly.Following are few of the Hart Crane's great poems.