10.22.12

I think Walt Whitman’s poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is definitely a piece that requires the reader to read through the poem a few times and analyze each stanza. During my first read through I was completely confused on what the poem was about. I didn’t know if it was about what the speaker was seeing on his ride on the ferry or how he feels connected with the people who have rode and will ride the ferry. About halfway through I realized it was about both. The speaker is talking about how so many people have seen, are seeing, and will see the same things he is looking at which is why he feels a connection with these people.

The speaker uses a lot of repetition. Often, the speaker repeated the same word in consecutive lines in stanzas. I think this repetition shows the connection the speaker is telling the reader about. Another way the speaker illustrates the connection he feels with people is by telling the reader he has done the same things he sees people doing currently.

The most interesting thing I noticed which furthers the concept of being connected is that the speaker addresses all of the questions and reiterates the statements he said throughout the poem in the last two stanzas. I also think these last two stanzas serve to show that even in the future, we’re still connected to the past and present. I think the last two lines of the poem summarize the flow of continuity, “You furnish your parts toward eternity,/Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.”

-Amber G.