Thursday, March 15, 2012

My Passion For Ferries

Appropriately titled, this entry is about the poetry Whitman experiences when riding ferries. He even identifies his experiences living in New York with the ferries. He says, "What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath -- the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems." This entry would work as a short forward to his poem, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", (although he is writing about the Fulton Ferry in this particular entry) as there are many similarities in theme and his general delight in what some people view simply as transit. Whitman delights in the flow of humanity (even if it is just to get from point A to point B) and seems to compare crossing the river on a ferry to the flow of humanity through time. To Whitman, the intersection of manmade and natural is extremely beautiful; he marvels at the picturesque nature of the steamboats in front of the bay. This entry, unlike many of the Civil War entries, has a lightness and an innocence to it. It is Whitman describing a passion he has, and the beauty he sees in the world as a result of it, and he does it well.

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