Kamala's Post

Kamala Randjelovic
Posting for Monday, November 26th, 2007
Question # 2

At first glance, Walt Whitman’s poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” seems to be an ode to the Brooklyn Bridge and New York City. But as Haw so clearly describes in his introduction, “Culture, History, and the Brooklyn Bridge”, the meaning of the Brooklyn Bridge is “…subject to the vagaries and individual perceptions” of all. In taking the reader beyond a literal interpretation of the poem, Haw proposes that the reader consider that two sides exist with to the representation of the Bridge: the physical and the “…cultural bridge of the mind and the imagination”. Understandably, many readers (including myself) have applied Whitman’s poem to their personal image of the Brooklyn Bridge and what it means to New York City i.e. this grand, sweeping arc connecting one borough to another in a sweep of iron elegance. Every New Yorker who has walked, or driven over the Brooklyn Bridge has“… absorbed, made sense of and sought to present the bridge”. In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” Whitman therefore utilizes physical places in New York City (such as the bridge) to communicate how landmarks connect the cities inhabitants with each other within the city. Whitman shows this connection in the poem, “Others will see the shipping of Manhattan North and West, and the heights of Brooklyn to the Southeast” (139).When Whitman poses the question in his poem, “What is then between us?” (141) this coincides with Haw’s idea that the bridge may be subject to all kinds of interpretations and meanings. At the same time, the sheer physical presence of the Brooklyn Bridge keeps it grounded and subject to the various representations. A reinforcement of this idea is found in the verse, “The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like”(142) The Brooklyn Bridge then can symbolize each one of us as being a unique landmark in a city of millions.