Faculty, Graduates Organize Second Hart Crane Tour

On Friday, October 2, Hiram faculty and Hiram community members joined together to organize a tour of Hart Crane sites for writers Mark Doty and Paul Lisicky. Doty is the author of six books of poems, including Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (2008), which won the National Book Award for poetry, and three memoirs. Lisicky is the author of the novel Lawnboy (Graywolf, 2006) and the memoir Famous Builder (Graywolf, 2002).

Ryan Rodriguez ’99, a student in the NEOMFA program (a consortial MFA mounted by the University of Akron, Kent State University, Youngstown State, and Cleveland State), learned of Doty’s interest in Hart Crane and asked to repeat the tour of Crane sites in Garrettsville that was organized for Hiram’s Bissell Symposium two years ago. Through the efforts of Robert Sawyer, Joyce Dyer, Jeff Swenson, current owners of the Crane house David and Kym Kirk, Garrettsville resident Jim Vincent ’65, Mary Quade, and Gloria Kuhn of St. Ambrose Rectory (the home of Crane’s grandparents), a tour was planned that included lunch at Sean’s Pub, a tour of the rectory, a tour of the Crane house, a tour of the mill and the bridge, a stop at the rose quartz marker near the site of the old Opera House, and a trip to Evergreen Cemetery, the location of the Crane family plot and the stone upon which these words are written: “Harold Hart Crane 1899-1932 Lost at Sea.” The inscription for Hart Crane, who committed suicide by jumping from the Orizaba into the sea, was selected by his stepmother, Elizabeth Meacham Crane, and carved on one surface of his father’s stone, who died one year before Crane did.

After the procession to the gravesite, Doty and Lisicky, escorted by Rodriguez and Michael Dumanis, director of the Cleveland State Poetry Center, left for a dinner in Akron, Ohio, to be followed by a craft talk at the University of Akron. NEOMFA sponsored the visit of Doty and Lisicky.