The Broken Tower

Gorham Munson:
Hart, forgive me for saying this. But you want to speak for America.

Hart Crane:
Yeah.

Gorham Munson:
Does it matter that you're queer?

Hart Crane:
[Annoyed, rolls eyes] Whitman was queer. That's why he could love *all* of America. The roustabouts. The slaves. The, the soldiers he nursed in the Civil War.

Gorham Munson:
So you will expose yourself?

Hart Crane:
It's funny, considering my truckdriver left me. No. People can know everything about us when we're dead. But for now, it's better to keep quiet. For father's sake.

Gorham Munson:
[sarcastically] Right. You wouldn't want to lose that tremendous job for the sake of some queer affirmation.

Hart Crane:
Isadora Duncan was incredible. Magnificent! But the crowd, what a bunch of conservative bores. So after, she comes back, breast exposed, she tells them to all go home and read the Calamus section from Whitman.

Gorham Munson:
I'm sure most don't even know Whitman.

Hart Crane:
[laughing] It was, it was incredible! Breast hanging out! Nipple exposed! Telling them that - that truth isn't beautiful. That in fact, it's quite indecent.

Hart Crane:
But the important thing is how do we get that into poetry? All of it. Jazz, Woolworth's, typewriters, buildings, freeways. Everything. It's, it's popping up from - bridges and, and tunnels, you know, from here to San Francisco. How do you get *that* into poetry?

Gorham Munson:
Eliot did it.

Hart Crane:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But *Rabbi Crane* [pointing to self, chuckling] - Rabbi Crane will do it with a *positive* affirmation. It's not enough to join a bunch of ape-neck sweenies saying "life is sh*t." We all know life is a dance of death, but you can still make something out of it. You can do something with it.