... Because, and this gets to the root of it, what appeals to me in Crane above all is that intrepid, improvisational, brave, audacious, crazy, ecstatic spirit of affirmation - the bell rings out - that "exultance", which he flung in the face of Eliot, Yvor Winters, Allen Tate... (& paid for it in their dismissals). This for me is the authenticity of the authentic, the true insignia, the mark of the poet. Crane said he was aiming to be the "Pindar of his age" - the great praise-poet. He was drawing on Whitman for that. & there is some validity to the claim that his aim was true.