“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
A Sample Explication/Interpretation
What I Did
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I reread the poem
Marked up things I noticed
Went back and forth to clarify, understand
Tracked pronouns
Wrote down my thoughts
Read a commentary, after, only to make sure I
wasn’t being an idiot
The Situation
• Does the poem tell a story? Is it a narrative poem? If
so, what events occur?
• Does the poem express an emotion or describe a
mood?
• Poetic voice: Who is the speaker? Is the poet speaking
to the reader directly or is the poem told through a
fictional "persona"? To whom is he speaking? Can you
trust the speaker?
• Tone: What is the speaker's attitude toward the subject
of the poem? What sort of tone of voice seems to be
appropriate for reading the poem out loud? What
words, images, or ideas give you a clue to the tone?
The Situation
• Title: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
The Situation
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Title: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
He’s on a boat with others
He keeps talking to “you”
He’s looking around at his surroundings
The Situation
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Title: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
He’s on a boat with others
He’s looking around
He “likes” what he sees:
– I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid
river,
– Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me
than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
– Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the
ebb-tide! / Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves! /
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor
me, or the men and women generations after me!
The Structure
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Form: Look at the number of lines, their length, their arrangement on the page.
How does the form relate to the content? Is it a traditional form (e.g. sonnet,
limerick) or "free form"? Why do you think the poem chose that form for his
poem?
Movement: How does the poem develop? Are the images and ideas developed
chronologically, by cause and effect, by free association? Does the poem circle
back to where it started, or is the movement from one attitude to a different
attitude (e.g. from despair to hope)?
Syntax: How many sentences are in the poem? Are the sentences simple or
complicated? Are the verbs in front of the nouns instead of in the usual "noun,
verb" order? Why?
Punctuation: What kind of punctuation is in the poem? Does the punctuation
always coincide with the end of a poetic line? If so, this is called an end-stopped
line. If there is no punctuation at the end of a line and the thought continues into
the next line, this is called enjambment. Is there any punctuation in the middle of
a line? Why do you think the poet would want you to pause halfway through the
line?
Title: What does the title mean? How does it relate to the poem itself?
The Structure
• No recognizable shape
• 9 numbered sections (?)
• Syntax (grammar)
The Structure
• Form through repetition:
– Repeating lines:
• “Others will…”
• “Just as you… so I…”
• “I too…”
– Lists of details and descriptions
• These are called “catalogues”
• When you list things together, you are showing some kind of
connections among them
– Recurring themes:
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Time and distance
Great and small
Still and moving
I and you
The Structure
The Structure
• Section 3: It avails not, time nor place—
distance avails not,
• Section 5: What is it then between us? / What
is the count of the scores or hundreds of years
between us? / Whatever it is, it avails not—
distance avails not, and place avails not,
• Between those: list of details, that separates
(distracts?) us from that repetition
Interpretation: Is he really talking to me?
• I am not there; the steamboats are gone
• I am sitting at a Starbucks on the south side of
Grand Rapids, overlooking Kalamazoo Avenue
and M-6.
Interpretation: Is he really talking to me?
• I am not there; the steamboats are gone
• I am sitting at a Starbucks on the south side of
Grand Rapids, overlooking Kalamazoo Avenue
and M-6.
• What is accomplished?
Interpretation: Is he really talking to me?
• I am not there; the steamboats are gone
• I am sitting at a Starbucks on the south side of
Grand Rapids, overlooking Kalamazoo Avenue
and M-6.
• What is accomplished?
– His soul is somehow connected to his surroundings:
the people, the river, the boats and buildings.
– Perhaps likewise, my soul is somehow connected to
my surroundings, just as I am connected to Whitman
across time and space.
The Ferry
• The river is a common symbol for the passage
of time and our journey through life. We saw
this in Huck Finn.
• The ferry cuts across the river, going from
shore to opposite shore, connecting the two
sides that are separated by… the passage of
time and our journey through life.