Hart Crane may have lived in Cleveland, Ohio, but, as Irwin masterfully shows, his poems stand among the greatest written in the English language.
Honorable Mention, Literature, PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine
In one of his letters Hart Crane wrote, "Appollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Cleveland, Ohio," comparing--misspelling and all--the great French poet's cosmopolitan roots to his own more modest ones in the midwestern United States. Rebelling against the notion that his work should relate to some European school of thought, Crane defiantly asserted his freedom to be himself, a true American writer. John T. Irwin, long a passionate and brilliant critic of Crane, gives readers the first major interpretation of the poet's work in decades.
"Crane and his admirers are beneficiaries of Irwin's fine book, the most learned, perceptive, comprehensive analysis of the work ever published . . . Essential."--Choice
"Irwin has written a book of heroic meticulousness which justifies the work of Crane to the mature and the scholarly . . . A capacious and provocative study."--Times Literary Supplement
"A welcome addition to the critical shelf on the poet . . . the most deeply felt and closely argued case thus far for Hart Crane as not merely an accomplished poet but an impressively learned one at that."--Sewanee Review
"Wallace Stevens said that poetry was one of 'the enlargements of life.' After reading John Irwin's celebration of Hart Crane, the reader can know better what Stevens meant."--Harold Bloom
"The fullest, deepest, most discerning, most instructive reading of The Bridge ever produced. An event in Crane criticism."--Langdon Hammer, editor of Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters
