Hart Crane was born on July 21, 1899.

Hart Crane was born on July 21, 1899.

Crane suffered from bouts of depression, and saw his poetry as an attempt to combat what he saw as a debased, materialistic world; further, his career had various ups and downs, he had troubled relations with his family, and deep ambivalence about his sexuality. As for a specific precipitating event, there is some speculation about his having made a spurned advance toward a crew member on Orizaba (the ship he jumped from), though without some word from him, no one knows for sure.

Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 - April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote poetry that was traditional in form, difficult and often archaic in language, and which sought to express something more than the ironic despair that Crane found in Eliot's poetry.

Kurt Schwitters and Jasper Johns, 'Periscope (Hart Crane)'.