One of the leading critics of our time, R.W.B. Lewis, charts the career of Hart Cranes imagination-of his vision, his rhetoric, and his craft. Crane, who has heretofore been assigned a relatively minor place in American letters, emerges from this rich, dense book as one of the finest poets in our language. Mr. Lewis traces the development of the theme which runs through all of Cranes poetry-the need for the visionary and loving transfiguration of the actual world-and claims that it is this theme which gives Cranes poetry its extraordinary consistency. Mr. Lewis also relates Cranes development as poet to the Anglo-American Romantic tradition and argues that Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, and Emerson are vital to an understanding of Cranes work.
