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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
In addition to several volumes of poetry, Paul Mariani has also written biographies of major 20th-century American poets: William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman. In his fourth biography, he takes on the life of Hart Crane (1899-1932), a contemporary of Williams who held a similarly pivotal role in the development of American literature's avant-garde. "It would be difficult," Mariani suggests, "to find a serious poet or reader of poetry in this country today who has not been touched by something in Hart Crane's music." (However, at the time, many critics--with some of whom he had strained personal relationships--did not evaluate his work so highly, which contributed in part to Crane's dramatic suicidal leap off a ship at sea.) Crane loved New York, moving there from his hometown of Cleveland as soon as he could; even when financial straits forced him to return home to work for his father, the "white buildings" of Manhattan loomed in his imagination. The Broken Tower does a fine job of recreating the passionate energy and vitality of Crane's life. Mariani weaves lines from Crane's letters and poems into his narrative throughout, and while he does not skimp in his accounts of the poet's alcoholism and promiscuous sex life with other men, he treats these matters simply as components of the poet's complex personality. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The first account of Crane to embrace his homosexuality and to assess its place in his poetry, Mariani's biography illuminates previously shadowy corners of the writer's life. John Unterecker's Voyager appeared 30 years ago, only a few months before the Stonewall protest helped to galvanize a movement that, by now, has done away with the qualifications and apologies so long applied to gay writers and their work. Mariani, who has written lives of John Berryman, Robert Lowell and William Carlos Williams, does not have Unterecker's (or the first Crane biographer Philip Horton's) advantage of having interviewed many who knew Crane. But he compensates by quoting more extensively, and tellingly, from Crane's correspondence, one of the most revealing and insightful of the literary 20th century. Mariani also has a better grasp on Crane's complex relationship with his parents, especially in his sensitive portrayal of Crane's father (the inventor of Life Savers candy), who heretofore has been treated as a stereotypical philistine. Mariani also clears up many misconceptions about Crane's final despairing months in Mexico and his sole tormented heterosexual affair. The one flaw in Mariani's research is that he has not drawn on the existing collections of the papers of Crane's closest friends and associates, such as Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters and Gorham Munson. All these individuals appear here through Crane's eyes. Perhaps Mariani is compensating for his predecessors' propensity to depict Crane through the recollections of others, but a more balanced approach would have strengthened the book. His occasionally florid style notwithstanding, Mariani does the necessary work of throwing sympathetic light on Crane's sexuality, and makes a convincing case for Crane as one of the greatest American poets of the century.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
In addition to several volumes of poetry, Paul Mariani has also written biographies of major 20th-century American poets: William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman. In his fourth biography, he takes on the life of Hart Crane (1899-1932), a contemporary of Williams who held a similarly pivotal role in the development of American literature's avant-garde. "It would be difficult," Mariani suggests, "to find a serious poet or reader of poetry in this country today who has not been touched by something in Hart Crane's music." (However, at the time, many critics--with some of whom he had strained personal relationships--did not evaluate his work so highly, which contributed in part to Crane's dramatic suicidal leap off a ship at sea.) Crane loved New York, moving there from his hometown of Cleveland as soon as he could; even when financial straits forced him to return home to work for his father, the "white buildings" of Manhattan loomed in his imagination. The Broken Tower does a fine job of recreating the passionate energy and vitality of Crane's life. Mariani weaves lines from Crane's letters and poems into his narrative throughout, and while he does not skimp in his accounts of the poet's alcoholism and promiscuous sex life with other men, he treats these matters simply as components of the poet's complex personality. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The first account of Crane to embrace his homosexuality and to assess its place in his poetry, Mariani's biography illuminates previously shadowy corners of the writer's life. John Unterecker's Voyager appeared 30 years ago, only a few months before the Stonewall protest helped to galvanize a movement that, by now, has done away with the qualifications and apologies so long applied to gay writers and their work. Mariani, who has written lives of John Berryman, Robert Lowell and William Carlos Williams, does not have Unterecker's (or the first Crane biographer Philip Horton's) advantage of having interviewed many who knew Crane. But he compensates by quoting more extensively, and tellingly, from Crane's correspondence, one of the most revealing and insightful of the literary 20th century. Mariani also has a better grasp on Crane's complex relationship with his parents, especially in his sensitive portrayal of Crane's father (the inventor of Life Savers candy), who heretofore has been treated as a stereotypical philistine. Mariani also clears up many misconceptions about Crane's final despairing months in Mexico and his sole tormented heterosexual affair. The one flaw in Mariani's research is that he has not drawn on the existing collections of the papers of Crane's closest friends and associates, such as Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters and Gorham Munson. All these individuals appear here through Crane's eyes. Perhaps Mariani is compensating for his predecessors' propensity to depict Crane through the recollections of others, but a more balanced approach would have strengthened the book. His occasionally florid style notwithstanding, Mariani does the necessary work of throwing sympathetic light on Crane's sexuality, and makes a convincing case for Crane as one of the greatest American poets of the century.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
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