🦋 To Brooklyn Bridge
I wrote in comments to Dr. Waterman's post at The Great Whatsit, that the first two stanzas of "To Brooklyn Bridge" had me anticipating a story -- maybe I should try and explain what I mean.  How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty --
Then, with inviolate cure, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
-- Till elevators drop us from our day... So: You see the seagull flying across the bay in the dawn in the first stanza -- and I think this stanza is really the most beautiful bit of the poem -- and the second gives a feeling of dropping, as if we are taking our eyes from the gull to look at the events below it. Great! We're going to have a poem describing some events on the lower Manhattan waterfront! But no; the lens never focuses after it leaves the gull. That's my complaint. "Till elevators drop us from our day" totally makes me think, "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
 Update: Waterman suggests that at least some of the images in subsequent stanzas could be interpreted as transformations of (or references to) the seagull. This is an interesting idea.
posted evening of Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
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