Stronger than Death

Hart Crane's Last Year in Mexico

Francesca Bratton

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English

John Murray
12 September 2023

Biography; Biography: literary; Literary studies: poetry & poets; Coping with illness; Coping with death & bereavement

'Poignant and fiercely intelligent, this is the best work of creative non-fiction I have read in years' FIONA MOZLEY

'Profound, moving and courageous' NICHOLAS ALLEN, IRISH TIMES

In April 1931, modernist poet Hart Crane arrived in Mexico City. Between mood swings, dire financial difficulties, and a rotating series of personal estrangements, Hart was struggling to make the parts of a fragmentary world cohere. This move to Mexico was one in a long list of attempts to find security. In just over a year he would be dead.

In July 1932, Grace Crane picks up the morning paper. Scanning the headlines, she is halted on page five. Her son's eyes stare back at her, tinted pink by the thin paper: 'POET LOST AT SEA FROM SHIP'.

Hart Crane's death has accrued a morbid mythology, often overshadowing discussions of his work. In Stronger than Death Francesca Bratton focuses instead on Hart's vivid life and his turbulent final year among the vibrant artistic and political communities of Mexico City. Interwoven with Hart's story is that of his mother, exploring Grace's lifelong frustrated creativity and, after his death, her attempts to reach him through seance. Finally, the book explores Hart's legacy as a queer man and as a poet, informed by Francesca's responses to his work during her own periods of mental illness.

Part-memoir, part-biography, Stronger than Death is a profound and lyrical meditation on grief, mental health, enduring love and the power of poetry.

By: Francesca Bratton
Imprint: John Murray
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 132mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 280g
ISBN: 9781529383379
ISBN 10: 1529383374
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 12 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Francesca Bratton is a writer, critic, poet and researcher at the Department of English at the University of Maynooth. Her academic monograph, Visionary Company: Hart Crane and Modernist Magazines was published by Edinburgh University Press (June 2021). She has previously taught at Durham University, where she studied for a doctorate on Hart Crane, and she is a graduate of St John's College, Oxford and UCL. Francesca has lived in Paris, worked as a bookseller and as a librarian. In 2022 she was awarded the Irish Arts Council Next Generation Award in Literature.

Reviews for Stronger than Death: Hart Crane's Last Year in Mexico

Brilliant and unsettling . . . Bratton's observations of Crane, mental suffering and re-entry to the world as being like the sight of the white tip of a rolling wave, are profound, moving and courageous -- Nicholas Allen * Irish Times * Francesca Bratton is a brilliant writer on Hart Crane * Shane McCrae *