ABSTRACT
A lthough Hart Crane was a child of the Midwest, it nevermoved him nor found a significant place in his mature poetry. For Crane was above all a poet of the city, and the city was New York, never captured as well as by Crane. Crane's parents had an unhappy marriage with separations, final divorces, and remarriages, which enabled him to see himself as a divided young man torn between maternal and paternal (he adopted his mother's maiden name for his first name), East and West, rural and urban, ecstasy and contemplation. Crane's homosexuality allowed him to see himself as a tormented Modernist or Symbolist, even as he was increasingly celebrating his passionate encounters in what Whitman had called the "city of orgies."
