Many Red Devils: Crane is Simple Yet Elegant

The Poem “Many Red Devils” by Stephen Crane has fascinated me since I first started engaging with poetry. 

This poem was featured in one of the first collections of poetry I ever owned. It was also one of the first poems that I worked to memorize. It holds a special place in my heart and when I read it I think about how far I’ve come in my relationship with the art of poetry writing and poetic analysis. 

I like this poem and, more generally, Stephen Crane’s poetry because it is a bit on the strange side. He doesn’t do rhyme and meter and the images he creates are not necessarily pretty. This poem is a good example of that. 

It is clear that he is not speaking literally. This opens up a wide array of possibilities for the interpretation of the “many red devils.” They could represent emotions because they are coming from the heart. They could represent ideas squirming around on the page. Whatever they are, the narrator is using them to write and they feel strange about it. 

The image is super unique in this poem. These tiny devils are scrambling around a page and getting mashed by the tip of a pen. It’s an ugly scene at the end of the day. Maybe Crane was trying to speak to the experience of writing but I think this poem leaves much room for interpretation. 

I love how short this piece is but it remains interesting. It is able to capture the reader through a clear but strange image and the visceral language used. This piece calls attention to itself in all the right ways and I think this poem deserves to be talked about more than it is.