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Crane, Harold Hart (1899–1932) By Salutsky, Ron
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Generally considered one of a half-dozen major American modernist poets, Hart Crane produced during his short, nomadic life some of the twentieth century’s most impossibly obscure verse alongside its most intensely visionary.
Born June 24, 1899, Hart Crane grew up in a bourgeois household in Garrettsville, Ohio. His mother and father fought often, divorced, and reconciled, a relationship which often cast the Crane’s only child on an opposing side. June Hart, a noted beauty, was controlling and hypochondriac, often calling her son home from his travels to lavish attention on his nervous, ailing mother. Crane’s attempts to win his father’s love were tempered usually with a desire for acceptance and financial support. Amid a chaotic upbringing, Crane on occasion spent time with his grandmother, the first in the young poet’s life to acknowledge his poetic gift.