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The Broken Tower: The Life of Hart Crane
Few poets have lived as extraordinary and fascinating a life as Hart Crane, the American poet who made his meteoric rise in the late 1920s and then as suddenly flamed out, killing himself at the age of thirty-two and thus turning his life and poetry into the stuff of myth.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 23, 2020
A Late American Romantic
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 as its chief symbol.
Crane's life was one of excess. From late adolescence, 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 commemorates 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 lengthy 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 Crane going back and forth between Cleveland, New York, Paris, Mexico and Hollywood in a short overreaching life. But most importantly, we see the creation and legacy of a poet. Mariani does well in describing the poems and in reading these difficult texts in conjunction with the poet's life and thought.
Crane's literary output was not extensive. Several of his poems are part of the treasures of American literature. These poems include, for me, "Voyages" (a six-part love poem from the White Buildings collection), "At Melville's Tomb" and other lyrics from White Buildings, The Broken Tower, Crane's final poem, and, of course The Bridge.
Mariani gives a good account of Crane. As with any biography of this type it is not definitive. I hope it will encourage the reader to explore and reflect upon Crane's poetry and achievement.
Robin Friedman
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 as its chief symbol.
Crane's life was one of excess. From late adolescence, 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 commemorates 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 lengthy 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 Crane going back and forth between Cleveland, New York, Paris, Mexico and Hollywood in a short overreaching life. But most importantly, we see the creation and legacy of a poet. Mariani does well in describing the poems and in reading these difficult texts in conjunction with the poet's life and thought.
Crane's literary output was not extensive. Several of his poems are part of the treasures of American literature. These poems include, for me, "Voyages" (a six-part love poem from the White Buildings collection), "At Melville's Tomb" and other lyrics from White Buildings, The Broken Tower, Crane's final poem, and, of course The Bridge.
Mariani gives a good account of Crane. As with any biography of this type it is not definitive. I hope it will encourage the reader to explore and reflect upon Crane's poetry and achievement.
Robin Friedman
August 23, 2017
I didn't finish this one. I quit in the middle but not for lack of interest in Hart Crane. The thing is, I can't spend too much time on these really long and detailed biographies unless the facts are woven into an emotional narrative. I felt this was dry and that Hart Crane's life seemed to be nothing but dry. He was a man who suffered deeply and who, in his poetry, tried to escape those wounds and feelings by writing about structures, buildings, islands, always using these subjects as (I believe) a great metaphore to his own place and space in his complicated emotional lanscape.
When your mother and father use you as a shield or toy with you or ignore and abandon you because they are both emotionally stunted teenagers disguised as an adults, it leaves tremendous scars on your psyche and causes depression, anxiety and feelings of guilt and shame. Add to that the fact that you are a sensitive poet with an above average intelligence and an urgent need to make up for all the lost time your parents stole from you by being selfish and immature and the fact that you are not straight.... well.
Hart Crane was destructive in his drinking sometimes and in his love life too but he was probably trying to silence the demons and relax so he could hear the music and see the beauty of the world.
This biography was good but it was lacking something...
When your mother and father use you as a shield or toy with you or ignore and abandon you because they are both emotionally stunted teenagers disguised as an adults, it leaves tremendous scars on your psyche and causes depression, anxiety and feelings of guilt and shame. Add to that the fact that you are a sensitive poet with an above average intelligence and an urgent need to make up for all the lost time your parents stole from you by being selfish and immature and the fact that you are not straight.... well.
Hart Crane was destructive in his drinking sometimes and in his love life too but he was probably trying to silence the demons and relax so he could hear the music and see the beauty of the world.
This biography was good but it was lacking something...
November 15, 2009
Fantastic biography! So engaging to read!
December 20, 2009
stunning, a real page-turner
November 23, 2017
I suspect Hart Crane's life is one that resists biography, making Paul Mariani's task a tall one. Still, The Broken Tower struck me as particularly slapdash at times, merely a retelling, via paraphrase, of Crane's own letters to various individuals over the course of his life. Due to his reliance on the letters, Mariani's narrative, though chronological in the larger sense, is not always within and between individual episodes, which can make them feel like non-sequiturs. Even at the level of individual paragraphs, or even within sentences, I kept writing notes in the margin asking what the connection was between one thought and the next, one clause and the next. Despite all of which, Mariani's readings of individual poems can be insightful.
June 25, 2018
A thorough, in-depth look at Crane's short life and sources of his dramatically good poetry. Crane was able to focus his entire energies on being a writer, as the wayward scion of a wealthy family that kept his expenses covered. Crane plumbed the depths of poetry going back centuries, making his writing seem erudite and effortless.
Once Crane's formative years and influences are laid out, as we see the inspiration for Crane's talents and torments, the reader is tempted to lose interest and patience. The book proceeds as flat as his life towards an early end, seeming a wastrel of his parents' resources, an emotional disaster, and a waste of great talent in alcohol and depression in which he impulsively ended his life by a drunken leap from a ship.
Once Crane's formative years and influences are laid out, as we see the inspiration for Crane's talents and torments, the reader is tempted to lose interest and patience. The book proceeds as flat as his life towards an early end, seeming a wastrel of his parents' resources, an emotional disaster, and a waste of great talent in alcohol and depression in which he impulsively ended his life by a drunken leap from a ship.
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June 4, 2025Great biography with even greater readings of Crane’s poems (which, if you’ve ever read even a stanza of his poetry, you find to be very welcomed). Crane was an ecstatic poet: dionysian, highly technical, the last romantic, and a veritable wealth of imagination and desire. He, like some of the other romantic poets before him (Keats, Shelley), was a flame that burnt brightly but briefly. What I wouldn’t give to read the epic of Montezuma and Cortés he was planning to write before his death. A tremendous visionary that will always be a favorite of mine.
June 16, 2019
My favourite biography of my favourite poet.
July 15, 2015
I had never read any of Hart Crane’s poems before picking up this biography, and I haven’t read any since finishing it. Although Mariani does a meticulous job describing Crane’s visionary quest to transcend the negativity of T.S. Eliot with an American poetry that “moved the mind beyond despair, towards awe,” I found the poetry itself to be cryptic and inaccessible. Crane’s pathology also made him hard to like. Persistent in his vision, charismatic and adventurous, he was also demanding, self-indulgent, and misogynistic, wearing down his friendships and trying the loyalty of both lovers and benefactors. Hart chose to end his life rather than face the demons that dogged him since childhood, born of his triangulated relationship with his parents and his profound disappointment in himself. The author, endlessly patient with his subject, characterizes Hart’s lifelong pattern as that of Icarus: “a leap followed by a fall.”
July 13, 2014
"A life extraordinary" as the cover says Crane's was not. If you expect to find a story as powerful as Crane's poetry, or insights into why he wrote the way he did, you will be disappointed. That said, it seems to be the most accorate and up to date biography and hence a must for a serious Crane reader.
August 16, 2012
"I write damned little because I am interested in recording certain sensations, very rigidly chosen, with an eye for what according to my taste and sum of prejudices seems suitable to -- or intense enough -- for verse." --Hart Crane :: May 29, 1927
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December 18, 2007This is the fourth biography of Hart Crane I've read and it ranks just behind Untereker's "Voyager."
July 19, 2012
Wonderful! One of the best biographies I've ever read. Mariani did a fantastic job of illuminating the life & mind of this incredible, troubled and troubling poet. It's hefty but well worth it.
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