Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“I am with you, you men and women of a generation hence, or ever so many generations hence” (Whitman 1856: 212). There is force in this annunciation. Whitman makes himself present to us, through the setting he depicts, through his “meditations” on it, and through the voice that speaks to us in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Titled “Sun-Down Poem,” it first appeared in the second (1856) edition of Leaves of Grass. Thoreau told a friend that it and “Song of Myself” were Whitman's two best poems. Indeed “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” has come to figure almost as prominently as “Song of Myself” in discussions of Whitman's work. They complement each other, the latter being the more radically innovative, the former seeming more conventional but equally complex in its demands upon the reader's imagination.Some early drafts of the poem survive in Whitman's manuscripts. After its first publication, he revised it in subsequent editions, retitling it, removing a few lines and passages, altering punctuation and capitalization, dividing it into sections and, over the years, altering those divisions. (The Textual Variorum of Leaves of Grass, Var.: 217-25, records these revisions, some of which are important to a full understanding of the poem.) The poem assumed its standard form in the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass.“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” can be read as a poem in the Romantic tradition, a meditation ... log in or subscribe to read full text