Hart Crane The Bridge Analysis

Hart Crane was born July 21, 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio was a poetic genius who was driven, and hampered, by his self-destructive personality. His alcoholism, sexual excesses and volatile behavior gave him the illusion of personal stability and lead to his greatest poems, but also brought his tragic doom. Cranes poems, though not always autobiographical, can be understood by looking at the occurrences in his turbulent life. Crane acted as his own worst enemy. The feeling, mood, style and form of Cranes poems mirrored his many mood swings. While his moods were ever-changing, the central issue of his career always remained the composition of his novel-length poem, "The Bridge." Hart Cranes poetry rarely documented his biography, …show more content…
Cranes personal problems and travails proved to be time-consuming hurdles as he wrote "The Bridge." He was distracted by his periods of depression, alcoholism, and other personal sufferings. Despite everything, "The Bridge" showed Crane to be a resolved and driven writer, able to rethink and revise his work. This poem shows that Crane could work toward goals and achieve what he wanted. He never forgot his desire to become a well-respected poet. He wrote the verses of "The Bridge" with simplicity and directness, explaining his feeling to what was at the time, an unprepared world. Some critics call "The Bridge" brilliant, his greatest achievement. Others label "The Bridge" as the best literary work of Cranes generation. "The Bridge" has " deft explication and lights up with stunning verbal surprises " (Unterecker, 658). But others look at "The Bridge" as a " composite of salvaged fragments, whirling rhetoric and powerful hallucinatory phrases, a flawed semi-epic " (Parkinson, 128). Cranes peers saw "The Bridge" as structurally incoherent and loosely emotional. Whether observed as a masterpiece or a flawed work, "The Bridge" undeniably makes profound statements about the modern industrialized world and the urbanized