American poet Hart Crane was BOTD in 1899. Born in Garrettsville, Ohio to a wealthy industrialist family, he grew up in Cleveland, moving to New York City in his teens following his parents’ divorce. He worked as a magazine copywriter and began publishing poetry, befriending many of the leading figures of New York’s avant-garde artistic scene, including Katherine Anne Porter, e.e. cummings, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. He he also immersed himself in the city’s underground gay scene, developing a taste for anonymous and violent sexual liaisons with working-class men. He published his first poetry collection White Buildings in 1926, turning heads with his poetry sequence Voyages, inspired by his relationship with Danish sailor Emil Opffer. After living with Opffer’s family for many years, he relocated to Paris, where he descended into rampant alcoholism. His 1930 narrative poem Bridges, composed in response to T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, was highly praised, helping him secure a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1931, he visited Mexico City with the intention of composing another epic poem, though his alcoholism made serious work impossible. Returning to the United States by ship in 1932, he was assaulted on board after making a sexual pass at a male crew member. After a bout of heavy drinking, he exclaimed “Goodbye, everybody!” and threw himself overboard. He was 32. Predominantly gay for most of his life, but for a brief affair with his friend Peggy Cowley, he was both ashamed of his sexuality while understanding it as central to his literary voice as an outsider. His work, while dense and difficult, has been highly influential on American writers including cummings. John Berryman, Robert Lowell and Tennessee Williams.