In March 1894, Stephen Crane, at that time an ill-nourished and as yet little-known author, visited the Harlem apartment that Hamlin Garland shared with his brother and displayed what to Garland seemed an astonishing parlor trick: he wrote out several poems as Garland watched. As Garland later recalled, he then asked, “Have you any more?” To this, “Crane, pointing to his temple, replied, ‘I have four or five up here . . . all in a little row. . . . That's the way they come—in little rows, all ready to be put down on paper.’”1 That Crane conceived of poetry, usually a medium based in sound, in visual terms accords with the long-noted presence of visual imagery and color in his works, most notably The Red Badge of Courage. According to his biographer Paul Sorrentino, Crane was “endowed with synesthesia,” explaining to his friend Willis Brooks Hawkins that...
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