Stephen Crane Poetry and Biography

Stephen Crane’s background is quite evident in his poetry. His strong family roots in faith is something he apparently couldn’t get away from. The one poem that really spoke to me was “Supposing That I Should Have the Courage.” It displays a man under the conviction of God as he is at the crossroads of accepting the saving grace of God. Crane was definitely a man that knew his Bible and knew the meaning behind God’s word.
As Crane observed life in the slums of New York, it gave him other inspirations where his writings turned to the writing of his first novel. Oddly he apparently couldn’t find a publishing company to publish this novel for him so he went to the expense of publishing it himself. To me, this would have to have taken a lot of courage to go out and take the rejection from the publishing companies and turn it around and place enough faith in yourself to just publish it yourself. That says a lot about his character and the faith he had in himself.
Of his poetry, some were a little difficult to understand. The one called “I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon” seems unusual to me. I can’t find reason in it. When I think of someone pursuing the horizon, I see someone searching for light (in reference to God’s light) but when it states, “You lie,” I don’t know if it means the one searching for the light is rejecting the light, or if it could be Crane making reference to Satan and his deception. I do not like to read something and not understand what it is really saying. The one poem called “War is Kind,” Crane is being sarcastic in this referring to war as being kind when in fact, as a lover or as a mother, you could never send your loved one off to war and ever think of it as being kind. But his point made was quite clear.