story is set in HAITIand relates the story of a mys-
terious woman whose sensuous performances in a
bar prove to be inspired by her tragic love life.
Matheus creates a number of nameless archetypes
in this story about desire, voyeurism, and sexual
objectification.
Cowdery, Mae Virginia(ca. 1909–1953)
A PHILADELPHIAnative whose works caught the
attention of leading Harlem Renaissance figures in-
cluding LANGSTONHUGHES,CHARLESS. JOHN-
SON, and ALAINLOCKE. In 1927, at the age of 18,
she won the Krigwa Poem Prize and had already
seen three poems published in BLACKOPALS,the
Philadelphia-based African-American literary mag-
azine. She went to New York to study at the PRATT
INSTITUTEand while there immersed herself in the
lively arts and literature circles of the Renaissance.
She published works in the major black periodicals
of the era, THECRISISand OPPORTUNITY,and was
also featured in respected anthologies including
CHARLESS. JOHNSON’s EBONY ANDTOPAZ(1927)
and BENJAMINBRAWLEY’s edition of The Negro Ge-
nius(1939). In 1936 Alpress, the same Philadelphia
publisher who printed the works of BESSIECAL-
HOUNBIRD, another Philadelphia poet and mem-
ber of the Black Opals literary circle, published her
volume, WELIFTOURVOICES ANDOTHERPOEMS.
Cowdery committed suicide in 1953.
Bibliography
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.
Crane, (Harold) Hart(1899–1932)
A highly respected poet and writer who, like a
number of other well-known white writers of the
time, began to incorporate African-American
characters and themes into his work as the Harlem
Renaissance began to thrive. Crane is best known
for his ambitious work “The Bridge,” a poem com-
pleted in 1930 that represents his efforts to com-
bine modernism, American romanticism, and
symbolist and post-impressionist styles.
Born in Garretsville, Ohio, in 1899, Crane was
the only child of Clarence Arthur and Grace Hart
Crane. In 1909, the marital problems of his parents
resulted in his relocation to Cleveland to live with
his grandmother. Crane suffered greatly as a result
of his parents’ intense emotional conflict, and as a
young man, he struggled with depression and alco-
holism. In 1932, morose and alone, while sailing
from Veracruz to New York, he jumped overboard
and drowned.
In 1915, he published his first poem, and
shortly thereafter he journeyed to NEWYORKCITY
with a family friend in the hope that he could im-
merse himself in the literary world and improve his
writing. He did so without financial support from
his father, who did not approve of his vocation.
Crane struggled to provide for himself and even re-
turned home to work in one of his father’s Akron,
Ohio, shops. Tensions prompted him to abandon
that job, however, and he decided to pursue jour-
nalism instead.
One of Crane’s most evocative poems is “Black
Tambourine,” a work in which he establishes paral-
lels between the life of the narrator and that of an
African-American man who is relegated to obscu-
rity in a cellar. Crane’s focus on the plight of
African Americans was influenced by his proximity
to the chefs and waiters who worked in the Cleve-
land tearoom and shop that his father ran. As
Crane biographer Philip Horton notes, the “only
diversion left to [Crane] during the dark,
monotonous days in the basement was the society
of the Negro waiters and chefs in the kitchen.” “He
enjoyed their high animal spirits and rich humor,”
suggests Horton, “and was in the habit of taking
coffee and toast with them each morning during
their breakfast hour, though he himself prepared his
own breakfast at home before leaving for work”
(Horton, 89–90). Crane saw parallels between him-
self and African Americans who so often had to
contend with alienation and exclusion. In a letter
to friend Gorham Munson, he explained that
“Black Tambourine” was “a description and bundle
of insinuations, suggestions bearing on the negro’s
place somewhere between man and beast.” “The
value of the poem,” he confessed, “is only, to me, in
what a painter would call its ‘tactile’ quality,—an
entirely aesthetic feature. A propagandist for either
side of the negro question could find anything he
wanted to in it. My only declaration in it is that I
find the negro (in the popular mind) sentimentally100 Cowdery, Mae Virginia