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Gay Peoples Chronicle

CASE WESTERN RESERVE

October 1985

HONORS

By CHARLES CALLENDER

Hart Crane, the gay poet who spent his early life in the Cleveland area, has finally been honored in this city. Case Western Reserve University has erected a bronze statue of Crane, by sculptor William McVey and commissioned by the Andrews Foundation, outside Freiberger Library.

The dedication ceremonies September 14 included a symposium about Crane's life work, a reading of his poems, and a reception in the special collections section of Freiberger, which is exhibiting Crane memorabilia. The Library is also beginning a permanent collection of Crane letters and manuscripts.

Born in Garretsville in 1899, Crane moved with his parents to Warren. In 1908

he came to Cleveland. living at 1709 East 115th Street in a house now demolished.

Although Crane spent much of his childhood in the University Circle area, his only contact with Western Reserve University was an evening, course in copywriting. He attended East High School, but dropped out. After his parents' divorce when he was 16 he moved to New York to become a poet, living with a family friend.

He came back to Cleveland in 1918 at his mother's urging, working briefly in a munitions plant, as a shipyard riveter, and as a Plain Dealer reporter. In 1919 he returned to New York.

he

Unable to find work, again came back to Ohio, first working in an Akron drug store owned by his father and then in the warehouse of his father's candy business in Cleveland.

Crane's brief stay in Akron coincided with his first serious love affair, though there is some evidence that his homosexual experiences had begun earlier. His lover's identity has never been established.

At the time he wrote his friend, Gorham Munson, "This 'affair' that I have been having has been the most intense and satisfactory_one of my whole life, and I am all broken up, at the thought of leaving him. Yes, the last word will jolt you."

O THOU WHO SLEEPEST ON THYSELF APART

LIKE OCEAN ADHWART LANES OF DEATH AND BIRTH AND ALL THE EDDYING BREATH BETWEEN DOST SEARCH CRUELLY WITH LOVE THY PARABLE OF MAN INQUISITOR INCOGNIZABLE WORD

OF EDEN AND THE ENCHAINED SEPULCHRE

UTTER TO LONELINESS THE SAIL IS TRUE.

WILLIAM MCVEY'S STATUE OF HART CRANE

In a later letter he wrote "My love affair is affording me new treasures all the time. Our holidays are spent together here in Cleveland and I have discovered

new

satisfactions at each occasion...Perhaps this is the romance of my life,--it is wonderful to find the realization of one's dreams in flesh, form, laughter and

intelligence--all

in one person. I am not giddy or blind but steadier and keener than I've ever been before."

After Crane moved back to Cleveland he continued to see his Akron lover, but the affair gradually died.

re-

By 1923, when Crane turned to New York, he had published several poems, including his first important work, "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen."

In New York he began another significant relationship, this time with a sailor, Emil Opffer. He commemorated this relationship by a cycle of six poems titled "Voyages."

R. W. B. Lewis described them as "the only truly moving and beautiful poetry of male homosexual love in English...because Crane has succeeded in making the passionate love of male for male representative of every kind of human passion: 'the secret oar and petals of all love." Crane used "oar and petals" as images for the male genitals.

Besides "Voyages" and "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen," Crane's major poems include "White Buildings" and "The Bridge," generally considered his masterpiece.

As a gay man, Crane may have had problems with his sexuality. He is described as consciously cultivating extremely masculine_appearance and behavior. Some reports say he "defiantly" described sexual exploits to his friends while drunk. His problems with alcohol became increasingly serious.

Crane's life became particularly troubled in the late 1920's, after publicaation of "The Bridge." He spent 1931 in Mexico, where he acquired a female fiancee. While returning to New York with her by ship he either jumped or fell overboard and drowned.

Although advance publicity for the CWRU events noted that "Crane's life became complicated by increasing bouts of heavy drinking and by homosexual affairs," the symposium itself maintained a resolute silence about his sexual orientation. Still, outright reference to homosexuality, even coupled with heavy drinking, seems an improvement upon Louis Untermeyer's guarded references

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