From Anxiety to Power: Grammar and Crisis in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

In the article From Anxiety to cause Grammar and Crisis in Crossing Brooklyn take, by Roger Gilbert, he talks round Walt Whitmans poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. Gilbert feels that this poem is peculiar(a) for Whitman because he never speaks directly of termination (339). He says that Whitmans tonicity remains resolutely ebullient (341), even though finish is in like manner present through out the poem. Whitmans struggle with death is figured in the poem to be a struggle with writing and to cross out of writing and into speech. He wants to start writing around life and power, not death and absence. Whitman really thought out the title of the poem.Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is a crisis poem because of his need to overcome the deathliness of writing and to return to the verbalize idiom that is Whitmans truest mode (342). Gilbert feels that the crossing carries the poet from the count of death to a renewed sense of his own power. In the poem, Whitman uses a second person pronoun, which is rare to see. The article asks why Whitman uses the phrase face to face. Gilbert says the answer is because objects have become people, people in turn have become objects (343). This allows them to be mastered by Whitman, barely also the passengers let him know that he isnt impervious to death.When Whitman says the book of account you in his poem, he in the end talks about the next commuters (344). As you read more into the poem, you see that the poet is metamorphosed from a me to a avoidance that no longer goes with the object-world. Towards the end of the poem, Whitman becomes more passive, which is very uncharacteristic of him. When he says The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far outside, he hints that he is disappearing from the scene. Also after Whitman talks about the sunset and falling back to sea, you can see how prominent death is in the poem. In my opinion, Gilbert does a good job of reading Whitmans poem.