A neighbor who's taking an English class this semester asked me about Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" today. It's been probably 20 years since I've read that poem, and it didn't leave much of an impression on me then.
I liked "Song of Myself" quite a bit when I read Whitman in undergraduate and grad school. The navel-gazing and self-absorption were a bit much even then, but the larger idea of it stayed with me over the years. It's the clearest expression of Transcendentalism I've ever read – the Romantic version of The Force expressed far more beautifully (and more provocatively) than George Lucas was capable of.
I didn't know much beyond that, though, so I took down my Norton Anthology from the bookshelf and read through "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" tonight. And I was stunned.
I wasn't ready for this poem 20 years ago, and it's shocking how much the years change your perception of great works of art. I wouldn't have understood the interconnectedness of it all then...the blurring and mingling of years and generations and nature and humanity.
It's a humbling but fine thing to know that we can revisit pieces we've read in our past and understand them more fully – that we can grow into them, even if we've grown so far away from who we used to be. It gives me hope to know that our critical minds aren't frozen in time...that they continue to grow even when we aren't aware of it.
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