THE LETTERS OF HART CRANE _By Brom Weber_ HART CRANE: A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY, 1948 [Illustration: _H. W. Minns_ HART CRANE (_Taken c. 1921_)] THE LETTERS OF HART CRANE 1916-1932 EDITED BY BROM WEBER _The imaged Word, it is, that holds Hushed willows anchored in its glow. It is the unbetrayable reply Whose accent no farewell can know._ HERMITAGE HOUSE · NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY BROM WEBER _All rights reserved_ _First Edition_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE “Of the poets who came into prominence during the 1930’s in America, none is more likely to achieve an immortality than Harold Hart Crane.” So write Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska in their recent, authoritative _History of American Poetry_. The extraordinary quality of Crane’s poetry and the tense drama of his brief life make such an observation valid and inevitable. It is amply supported in an indirect sense by the amount of devoted attention which Crane has received in the twenty years since his death by drowning in 1932. Waldo Frank’s edition of the _Collected Poems_ appeared in 1933. The first full-length book on Crane, Philip Horton’s _Hart Crane_, came in 1937. Eleven years later, in 1948, the editor’s _Hart Crane_ was published. Meanwhile, magazines, anthologies, and critical volumes have given substantial space and consideration to the poet. It seems fitting then, and necessary too, that the correspondence of this outstanding writer be presented now. Crane’s letters exist in scattered condition: some in magazines, others in the appendices of books, still more in libraries and private collections. Many have already been lost, because of carelessness, wartime events, or other factors. But apart from such matters as preservation and compilation, there are the human revelations and literary merits which distinguish Crane’s letters and make this collection desirable. Seldom has a man laid his heart bare as does Crane in these documents, seldom with the passion and skill which he so masterfully infused into his poetry as well. It seems undoubted that many of these letters will before long find their way into anthologies of great letters and prose.