Harry Crosby And Hart Crane Essay, Research Paper
Sy Kahn
On Crosby and Crane
Crosby’s own books of poetry and his diaries, Shadows
of the Sun, testify that he apprehended and rendered reality in much the same way as
Crane. For example, both shared an enthusiasm for the technology of the century and saw in
the symbol of the machine a dynamic expression of man’s restlessness and creative
spirit. Crosby’s interest is reflected in the many photographs he took of machine
subjects: airplanes, dynamos, factory smoke stacks, railroad signal towers, and wires
strung against the sky like giant harps. He was especially entranced with speed, drove
fast cars, loved race horses and whippets, kept both, and learned to fly and solo only a
few months before his death. The pace and space of Crane’s poem, the many metaphors
of movement, and, above all, the metaphoric implications of the bridge symbol were
precisely the devices that would touch Crosby in the most direct and responsive ways. As
their mutual enthusiasm for Blake and Whitman suggests, Crane and Crosby were poets who
responded to an ideal image of man, and their resource to the metaphors of the machine, of
speed and space, were for the purpose of suggesting man’s inventive and adventurous
nature. As with Whitman, their celebration of man’s technological accomplishments was
not for man’s literal achievement but rather symbolic of his insistent attempt to
relate himself to an ultimate reality and destiny that suited the dimensions of his soul.
From Sy Kahn, "Hart Crane and Harry Crosby," Journal of Modern Literature
1:1 (1970), 47.