Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet.
Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope.
In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem, in the vein of The Waste Land, that expressed a more optimistic view of modern, urban culture than the one that he found in Eliot's work.
In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has been hailed by playwrights, poets, and literary critics alike (including Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Bloom), as being one of the most influential poets of his generation.
Crane visited Mexico in 1931–32 on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his drinking continued as he suffered from bouts of alternating depression and elation.
While en route to New York aboard the steamship Orizaba,
Just before noon on April 27, 1932, Crane jumped overboard into the Gulf of Mexico.
Although he had been drinking heavily and left no suicide note, witnesses believed his intentions to be suicidal, as several reported that he exclaimed "Goodbye, everybody!" before throwing himself overboard.
His body was never recovered. A marker on his father's tombstone at Park Cemetery outside Garrettsville, Portage County, Ohio includes the inscription, "Harold Hart Crane 1899–1932 lost at sea".
