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forms her analysis. Thus, while in many instances in A Russian Psyche Dinega conducts spirited dialogues with Tsvetaeva scholars and biographers such as Schweitzer, Hasty, and Feiler, she applies feminist and gender scholarship much more narrowly. She touches only briefly on the role ofgender for a poet such as Akhmatova, and leaves unexplored the implications ofTsvetaeva's liaison with the poet Sophie Parnok for her quest for an appropriate muse. A study diat opens with die statement that "in envisioning herselfas the energetic, degendered herald of poetry, she not only finds a way to surpass her femininity and enter the ranks of great poets, but she ingeniously repositions herselfat the very forefront ofcreative endeavor" (23) raises expectations that current gender theory will play a larger role. On the odier hand, few scholars bring to their endeavor the mix oftalent as both reader and writer, rapport with her subject, and critical distance that we see in A Russian Psyche. Dinega has made a significant contribution to Tsvetaeva, Slavic, and gender studies, ¿fc Clive Fisher. Hart Crane: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. 568p. Joanne Craig BiSHOi1S University This is a wonderful book for anyone who is interested in American poetry ofthe early twentieth century. Fisher has documented the life ofHart Crane in the most meticulous detail: it is as ifwe know, mainly from the voluminous correspondence, every time Crane picked up a book, a pen, a glass, or a sailor. Yet at the same time the narrative miraculously maintains a clear sense of direction as it sweeps us through the poet's history, flowing from his forebears to his nuclear family, from youth to achievement to the disintegration that the biography foreshadows from its beginning. The effect, through, rather than in spite of, the masses ofdetail, is panoramic as the poet's drive to exploit and actualize his gifts propels him toward catastrophe as inevitable, Fisher suggests, as any in Greek drama. Crane was born in 1899 and grew up with the twentieth century and all its promises and direats. Fisher begins with the historical backgrounds ofdie Cranes and the Harts and situates the poet in relation to the two families in their Middle Western background and specifically in relation to the turbulent marriage that overshadowed his childhood and the conflicts between his parents and between them and him from which he was never able to escape, although late in his life he and his father managed to enjoy a period of reconciliation. There is a detailed account of Crane's thorough, eclectic, and idiosyncratic lifelong self-education, 80 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 2003 Reviews in spite ofwhich he always felt anxiety among the university graduates who were his literary associates, although it may have strengthened his alliances with the sailors to whom he was drawn. Crane was both an outsider and an insider among his fellow outsiders because ofhis sexual predilections and because ofhis determination to be an artist in commercial America. At eleven Crane looked at die volumes ofpoetry on the shelves ofhis Aunt Alice, who taught him piano, and said: "This is going to be my vocation . I'm going to be a poet" (19). Fisher has given us an extensive and detailed account of the literary and artistic circles that Crane frequented in New York, Cleveland, Paris, and Mexico. The book will be helpful to readers interested in all thoseworlds in the 1920s, in Waldo Frank, Malcolm Cowley, YvorWinters, Allen Tate, Harry and Caresse Crosby, Marsden Hartley, Roy Campbell, and David Siqueiros. The cast ofcharacters is so vast that it is hard to keep track of it. The index is a great help. Crane's loneliness and isolation and his incessant need for care and cash endlessly impelled him toward others, but he was an intolerably inconsiderate guest and a formidable financial risk. People who knew him likened Crane to "a mad howling dervish" (404), a hurricane (401), a tornado (219), an "erupting volcano" (479), and "a youngster who has been making a nuisance ofhimselfand felt badly about it" (468). Sooner or later self-protection constrained the friends whom he drew to him and who wanted to help him to turn him away. One exception...

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