Walking Brooklyn Bridge, public domain image for use in United States.

Brooklyn Bridge has inspired more poetry than any other bridge in history. Hart Crane, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman are among those who spake thus:

O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,

Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

– To Brooklyn Bridge, by Hart Crane

Artists continue to be inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge. Joseph Stella painted Roebling’s cabled masterwork in deconstructed cubism. Actor Bill Murray quoted Wallace Stevens and Galway Kinnell intoned Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” at Poets House in New York City on June 13, 2012 for the 25th Annual Poetry Walk Across Brooklyn Bridge. “Poems give you what you need for life’s journey,” stated Lee Briccetti, Executive Director. Should Boston initiate an annual poetry marathon, honoring victims and heroes of the April 2013 Boston Marathon, on the Zakim Bridge or perhaps in Boston’s Copley Square?

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.