10/23/12 James Baldassano

For today’s blog post, instead of posting about the class, we were asked to analyze the famous poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”. It was a long poem, but it had a lot to offer in both symbolic terms, as well as beautiful poetry. It is essentially about a man on the ferry, coming home from work. Simple enough, right? It talks about the people he sees, how they amuse him, and wondering what they are thinking about.

As the poem progresses into its further stanzas, a deeper more philosophical meaning becomes unveiled. He starts speaking about a more general crowd of people around him, of people that will be taking this ferry in the next 50 or 100 years. Eventually, he makes his way to his relation to all  them, to every person in the world. “Just as any of you have been part of a living crowd, I too have been part of a crowd.” or “I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan…” are both lines that exemplify his thoughts that all humans are connected, intertwined by some degree of destiny that links the life of one to every other. All these ordinary things he has done, are done by an extreme amount of people today (the poem’s view of ‘today’), and will be done by millions after. It is an experience shared by him that connects him to every other ordinary person who has ever existed. But it also gives a sense of individualism, for although he has this invisible bond with all these people, he is his own person, whom has intimate, personal thoughts.

I find this poem rather interesting, for it discusses a curious part of the human race. Although it was written a while back, its principle still applies to many today. Our thoughts, our actions, our lives, are all things that are curiously interlace with one another’s.