Poem Analysis: The Brooklyn Bridge

Crane moved back to NewYork City In 1924 and resided in an apartment where just Roberlin, the man who devised the Brooklyn Bridge. One day, when he gazed the distance, the graceful shape of Brooklyn Bridge jumped into his eyes. So that inspired to eulogize the bridge. Although there exists sharp contrast on the theme between Bridge and Waste Land, on the structure, Crane made use of the composition of Eliot’s. At the beginning of the poem, the hero waked up in the dawn and strolled on the bridge. Then he toured the whole city and returned to the original place at night. During a short day, his minds transcended from east to west, from remote antiquity by Whitman to modern society. Meantime, the poet converged diverse historical affairs, mythology

Nothing would change the graceful bearing of the bridge. The lights and voices of the bridge are seldom separable, and they appear together. The lights of the bridge are like strings of pearls, pearls that might “ whisper through the Doge’s hands.” Brooklyn bridge is a superbly articulated structure, an “unfractioned idiom,” which by transference of epithets means both spiritual wholeness and the poet’s poem which mediates that wholeness to man. The time scheme has shifted to evening, and the lights are compared to an “immaculate sigh of stars,” an inviolate exhalation of some divine reality—note once again the synaesthetic images—which literally and figuratively “condense eternity.” The last line presents a fine visualization of night coming to the city. Crane personifies the bridge as a parent who lifts and hugs night in its arms, a gesture of love that drives away despair. Lift almost always connotes some kind of aspiration; but here it also suggests that revelation waited for in vain is confirmed by the next stanza. If the bridge “condense eternity,” it also attests to the unyielding grip in which time holds man; and if the bridge is a shimmering light of salvation, it paradoxically can be glimpsed only in darkness, and then only its shadow. After that, the poet expresses his emotion on the bridge. The “shadow” used here is the shadow of the bridge, “darkness” is the darkness of the American life. Thus we can induce the underline meaning from the poet. Only if you understand the gloomy side of the American life, you can comprehend the truth of the bridge. The city’s fiery parcels all undone” suggests the extinguishing of the building’s light, or fragmented urban lives,” while “Already snow submerges an iron year” recalls the heavy load of custom that weighs down the spirit. Meantime, the word “iron” modifies the “year” technically and protrudes the overwhelming place of American