Hart Crane’s Wrapture

Abstract

This chapter reads Hart Crane's extreme license with words against stricter conceptions of error. For instance, in the second section of his poem “Voyages,” he describes the sea as “Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love”—his odd spelling of “wrapt” here conjuring the sense of both “wrapped” and “rapt” simultaneously, giving “inflections” an appealing physicality. Reading mistake along these lines is particularly Cranian: his letters make it clear that language's ability to elide, change, and intimate (rather than simply mean) excites and propels him into writing poetry. Accordingly, Crane's admirers tend to focus their praise on the very moments of inexplicability that his critics find most inhospitable. By placing “wrapt” and other neologisms in the context of this long-standing debate about Crane's work, the chapter suggests the benefit of reading his creativity as a form of mistake rather than the other way around.