The responsibility to be exercised in the task of organizing the letters of a tempestuous and controversial man like Hart Crane, is as much a matter of human judgment as it is a familiarity with the canons of scholarship. Crane conformed less, overtly at least, to the dominant mores of his age than probably any of his contemporaries. The leitmotif was restless deviation--whether aesthetic, social, religious, or sexual. The record of his days vibrates with an explosive terror and repose--elated, wretched, violent, Rabelaisian--which find dynamic outlet in his letters. Insofar as Crane’s letters will serve to develop a self-portrait and contribute toward an understanding of three decades of our American past, no harm can be accomplished by a forthright presentation. The editor, therefore, has not suppressed any portions of Crane’s letters which might disturb the genteel or excite the prurient. Those who have studied Crane’s poetry with perception know how richly studded it is with the imagery, symbolism, and themes of love. As this preface was being put into final form, the editor received a copy of Dr. Paul Friedman’s “The Bridge: A Study in Symbolism” (_The Psychoanalytic Quarterly_, Jan. 1952). After discussing such writers as Wilder and Kafka, Dr. Friedman, one of the few psychoanalysts who displays a genuine concern for literary values, goes on to say: “It implies no irreverence toward Crane’s poetic sensibility to introduce these [psychological] concepts. The sexual imagery in his poetry is overt, undisguised.” Of the “Voyages” series, Dr. Friedman writes: “Here the psychoanalyst could hardly be more explicit than Crane himself.” Under no circumstances could the wealth of background experience and emotion which produced the alternately-pessimistic and ecstatic love poems of Crane conscientiously be omitted from a volume of his letters. One of the great love-poets of our time, few men have been so tyrannically governed by a chronic need to love and be loved. One need only observe in these letters how Crane’s disinterest in poetry and his torpid creativity after 1929 were affected by a new and surprising love relationship. Miraculously rejuvenated, as it were, he wrote “The Broken Tower,” one of his best poems.