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Popular Culture Review
intoxicated writer, was an extraordinary oddity; and much of the imagery
seemed disjointed and confused. While the surface descriptions suggested the
work of a rather wild imagination, I surmised that Crane was concerned with
something more than the cerebral machinations of an aspiring drunkard in a
filthy saloon. However, I was involved with more pressing concerns at the time,
and it was not until some three months later, while I was preparing a class on
modem writers, that I had a chance to look carefully at the poem. That was
when I realized that Crane was not simply concerned with the innocuous
connection between alcoholism and contemporary writing. Most important was
his concern about the insanity of abusive drinking as a whole and the manner in
which it could generate a menagerie of psychotic delusions among the
chronically addicted, in this case, a contemporary intoxicant-poet who is
gradually overwhelmed by catastrophic illusions of grandiosity.
I knew that Crane was himself an alcoholic, and it is very possible that
the “The Wine Menagerie” may have been a testimonial based on first-hand
experience, especially in its description of the distorted mental processes which
inv &