She was married to poet-playwright Orrick Johns and writer Malcolm Cowley and was the lover of playwright Eugene O'Neill and poet Hart Crane.
[7][8][9] As Crane wrote to a friend about his romance with Peggy Cowley, "Rather amazing things have happened to me since Xmas.
Appearing at moments to be a highly symbolic affirmation of their relationship, as well as a denial of his homosexual past (the 'broken tower' can be read as a defeated phallus), the poem was written just months before Crane committed suicide by jumping off of a passenger ship in 1932, following a trip to Mexico.
[11][12] Though their relationship had begun to deteriorate by that time (Crane said he had "misunderstood and misinterpreted Peggy's character quite badly"), Cowley was with Crane on the boat, and she figures briefly, but poignantly, in the events leading up to his death.
"[14] After Crane's death, Cowley married twice more and converted to Catholicism at the age of 60.