Sanguine Descendant: T. S. Eliot’s influence on Hart Crane’s poetry Anonymous College

Poetry, as a genre of literature, is broadly defined as “The art or work of a poet”, or “Imaginative or creative literature in general” (Oxford English Dictionary). With a definition so broad in context, poets are able to conceive their own literature as poetry by studying poems and poets before them. Subsequently, poets are able to extend or manipulate the ideas, structure, and themes of poems that preceded theirs. For instance, Thomas Stearns Eliot was the precursor for Harold Hart Crane. Crane’s work suggests that he studied Eliot’s writing, such as the way in which Eliot created movement with words and montage of metronomes. Not only did Crane emulate particular elements of Eliot’s work, but also and transformed the despairing themes in Eliot's work into hopeful propositions for the future through his epic poem, “The Bridge”.

Eliot’s poetic work contains the movement of space and time, a predominant feature of which Crane also uses in his poetry. For example, the speaker in Eliot’s epic poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, creates a back-and-forth movement with his diction of thoughts. The speaker in this poem anticipatorily leads audiences to “an overwhelming question”(10), then remarks to the audience “Oh, do not...