SOURCE: "A Divided Self: The Poetic Responsibility of Hart Crane with Respect to 'The Bridge '," in Modernist Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1979, pp. 3-18.

In the following essay, Schwartz explains the fragmentation of The Bridge by discussing the ways in which Crane's temperament and training were actually unsuitable to the writing of such a poem.

I would like to consider the question of how Hart Crane came to think of himselfas the kind of poet who could undertake the composition of The Bridge By temperament, education, and heritage Crane was the worst equipped of poets to undertake an exhaustive meditation upon the nature of the modern with its implications of a maturing technological culture. Constitutionally unable to apprehend the world as a whole, he had no enthusiasm for cosmic poetic designs or programs. He was expressive not topical by nature. Yet he found himself gradually being cast (and casting...