Thomas A. Vogler

Hart Crane

Waldo David Frank

A Poem

The Bridge

"The novel Holiday is a compelling account of a southern lynching in which the simmering sexual and religious fervor and the violent act to which they inexorably lead are depicted in a modernist, experimental style. Although Holiday was promoted alongside Harlem Renaissance works, Waldo Frank was not a natural fit for the New Negro movement. Born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in New Jersey and educated at Yale, Frank traveled around the South in 1922 with his friend, the Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer, collecting observations for what was to become Holiday.The events of the novel take place on a single day in the southern town of Nazareth, a day so punishingly hot that Virginia Hade gives her father's black workers a holiday from work at the request of the black overseer, John Cloud. Meanwhile, a Revival tent is set up in the town, and a wave of religious passion spreads among the townsfolk, culminating in the novel's final, brutal act. Waldo Frank (1889-1967) was a journalist and the author of The Unwelcome Man, Our America, Dawn in Russia, and In the American Jungle, among other works. Kathleen Pfeiffer is an associate professor of English at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. She is the author of Race Passing and American Individualism."

Holiday

It is difficult to overestimate the impact that his friendship with Waldo Frank had on the life and work of Hart Crane. Crane often sent poems to Frank for advice and feedback, and, according to one of his biographers, the opinion that he "treasured most...was that of Waldo Frank." The best evidence that remains of the relationship between the two men is in their correspondence. However, until now, a completed, unedited version has not been available. Cook provides his readers with an introductory essay, followed by the letters, arranged in historically verifiable sequence and annotated with extensive footnotes and editorial comments. He also provides a complete index, keyed to existing ethical and descriptive bibliographies, making the book a particularly useful reference tool.

The Correspondence Between Hart Crane and Waldo Frank

Jean Toomer

"Unusually valuable for the history of modernism. This fascinating correspondence will create further interest in Toomer, Frank, and the mixed-race environment of the 1920s."---Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Telling Women's Lives: The New Biography --

Waldo David Frank

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