Almost fifty years ago, Hart Crane was one of my starting-points as a reader of modern poetry. He still is. But my admiration for him always led to a quarrel, and it still does. By now, I hope I can do a better job of framing the quarrel as an argument, instead of as one of those impatient snorts we give when we are drawn in but not convinced, put off but can't let go. The argument starts like this. If "Voyages", one of the stand-out pieces in White Buildings, had maintained its show of coherence all the way to the end, it would have been a successful abstract poem sequence. It didn't have to make sense, but it did have to keep up its confident, even if drunkenly confident, tone: and it didn't. Or, to put Hart Crane back into the present tense which is his due, it doesn't.