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Notes
Lesley Byrd Simpson, "The Late Hart Crane" in The New English Weekly 1 (15 September 1932), 531. Frequently quoted, this account has been reprinted in John Unterecker's Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane (1969), p. 722. Unterecker attempts a synthesis of Simpson's and Peggy Cowley's statements about "The Broken Tower."
Susan Jenkins Brown, ed. Robber Rocks: Letters and Memories of Hart Crane, 1923-1932 (1969). Peggy Cowley's "The Last Days of Hart Crane," first published in Venture 4, 1 (1961), is reprinted here on pp. 147-173.
In the private collection of Vivian H. Pemberton, associate editor of the Hart Crane Newsletter. The text was first published in HCN 2, 2 (Spring 1979) in Pemberton's article, "The Composition of 'The Broken Tower,'" pp. 6-10.
Kenneth Lohf's entry C49 is not included here. This typescript (and carbon) was made by Samuel Loveman in 1932 from the version sent to him by Crane on 27 March 1932 (C48).
Brom Weber, ed. The Letters of Hart Crane, 1916-1932. (1965). Weber 402 is Crane's letter to Morton Zabel of 20 April 1932: "About a month ago I sent you a poem, for possible use in Poetry, but have not as yet heard from you about it. The letter may have gone astray for all I know. . . ." Zabel's reply on 24 April 1932 is quoted in John Unterecker's Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane (1969), 759: "I am alarmed to hear that you sent a poem to the Poetry office, for none has reached me. . . . I hope to hear from you directly abt the poem. . . . Diligent search has failed to discover [it] at the office."
Thomas S. W. Lewis, ed. Letters of Hart Crane and His Family. (1974), p. 651. Letter to Bessie M. Crane.
The first printing of "The Broken Tower" in The New Republic contains a typographical error in line 6: "town" for "tower". Two minor changes from the final manuscript occur in the removal of commas after 'hope' (l. 24) and 'pebbles' (1. 35).
Malcolm Cowley quoted this note (appended to his copy of "The Broken Tower") in a letter to the editor of The New English Weekly 1 (14 July 1932) challenging a statement made in Gorham Munson's article, "A Poet's Suicide and Some Reflections," in NEW 1 (23 June 1932) that Crane had submitted "The Broken Tower" to various editors five years before, thereby casting doubt on the date of composition and its chronological place as Crane's last poem. Cowley's letter: "'The Broken Tower' was written this spring, in Mexico, over a period of a month, during which many people saw unfinished versions of it. In letters from Mixcoac, where Hart was living, I had accounts of its progress. Finally on Easter Day, he sent me the completed poem. . . ."
Crane says "a" poem rather than "the" poem, indicating that he had not sent working drafts to Loveman as he had to Grunberg and Peggy Cowley. Crane's note continues: "Happiness continues, with also all the gay incidentals of a Mexican Easter — exploding Judases, rockets, flowers, pappas (excuse me, that's the spelling for Mexican potatoes!) mammas, delicious and infinitesimal children wearing masks and firemen's helmets, flowers galore and a sky that carries you ever upward! . . . ."
Joseph Schwartz and Robert C. Schweik, Hart Crane: A Descriptive Bibliography (University of Pittsburgh Press [1972]), A4.1 (Presentation copies, pp. 33-34). Of the first edition, first impression, 50 copies were supplied with a limitation notice on p. ii (blank in the regular trade issue): "FIFTY COPIES OF THIS WORK / HAVE BEEN SET ASIDE / FOR PRESENTATION ONLY TO THE / FRIENDS OF HART CRANE / This copy is number / [4 horizontal lines over which the number was machine-stamped in blue ink]". The title-page states that the book was edited with an introduction by Waldo Frank; however, a copy of the trade issue, sold at the Swann Galleries sale of 10 March 1977 (cat. 1055, item 74), has laid in an undated note by Samuel Loveman: "I was actually the editor of the Collected Edition. Most of the posthumous poems were in such fragmentary or inchoate state, that I had to piece or cement them together. Waldo Frank was chosen by Mrs. Crane [Grace Hart Crane, the poet's mother] as impresario, because of his name value." This statement is at partial variance with Loveman's recollection in Hart Crane: A Conversation with Samuel Loveman, edited by Jay Socin and Kirby Congdon (1964) in which he mentions the choice of Frank over himself because of Frank's greater literary prominence, but makes no claim to acting in an editorial capacity on the book.
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