The Bridge (poem)

The University of Illinois' Modern American Poetry website analyzes the symbolic meaning of "the bridge" as central image throughout the book: When Crane positions himself under the shadows of the bridge, he is, in one sense, simply the poet of the romantic tradition, the observer who stands aside the better to see; but he is, in another sense, the gay male cruising in an area notorious for its casual sex.

Crane’s "epic of America" gets underway as a personal quest, as a poem divided against itself, in devotion to an urban setting that encourages social diversity, with secret inscriptions that retain their meanings to which only a privileged few are accessible.

The title of the piece is based upon the fact that Columbus attributed his crew's survival across the Atlantic Ocean to "the intercession of the Virgin Mary.

from which dancer and choreographer Martha Graham took the title of her ballet Appalachian Spring, scored by composer Aaron Copland.

"[6] In a slightly more mixed review, "Metaphor in Contemporary Poetry," Cudworth Flint wrote, "This poem seems to me indubitably the work of a man of genius, and it contains passages of compact imagination and compelling rhythms.

But its central intention, to give to America a myth embodying a creed which may sustain us somewhat as Christianity has done in the past, the poem fails.

"[7] Critical consensus on The Bridge (and on Crane's status in the Modernist canon more broadly) still remains deeply divided.

"[11] Allen Ginsberg called "Atlantis" the greatest work in Western metrical rhetoric since Shelley's "Adonais".

From a more positive critical perspective, The Bridge was recently singled out by the Academy of American Poets as one of the 20th century's "Groundbreaking Books".

The organization writes, "Physically removed from the city [since he began the piece while living in the Caribbean], Crane relied on his memory and imagination to render the numerous awesome and grotesque nuances of New York, evident in poems such as 'The Tunnel' and 'Cutty Sark.'

"[14] As the poem began to take shape and showed promise, Crane wrote, "The Bridge is symphonic in including all the strands: Columbus, conquest of water, land, Pocahontas, subways, offices.