At age 21, Crane made his first cash sale ($10) with "My Grandmother's Love Letters." Artistically, he distanced his writing from the precise logic of T. S. Eliot to emulate the ecstatic symbolism of Wallace Stevens. In the postwar era, he rejected his father's attempts to force him into business. He was his own man at last; he began writing copy for New York's J. Walter Thompson Agency and continued submitting to Dial. In 1922, he first described the wonders of technology in "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen," a preface to the themes of his loftiest poems. Editor Marianne Moore brought him back to earth by rejecting "Passage" and suggesting improvements in "The Wine Menagerie." Her criticism hurt his feelings and precipitated an infantile tantrum.
In 1925, Crane was still unable to support himself and lived at the New York farm of poet Allen Tate and novelist Caroline Gordon while he worked on The Bridge. With their help, he acquired a patron who advanced $1,000 so that Crane could travel and compose in leisurely fashion. Because he lacked self-discipline and mismanaged money, he drank himself into the gutter, brawled with sailors, and was arrested for fighting.
