The Brooklyn Bridge is a very famous bridge that is praised by many. There have been numerous articles written about this famous bridge but i have never a peice of writing about it quiet like Vladimir Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky was a Russian poet who wrote this poem during his three-month stay in the US.
He starts off the poem by saying “give, Coolidge, a shout of joy!, I too will spare no words…about good things” (479). Here I believe that he is actually giving the reader a reason for his unique writing style in this poem, by saying he will spare no words about good things I think he means he will just say the utmost best about the Brooklyn Bridge (the good thing) and not waste any words doing anything else. He then goes on to write a word or two and then skips to another line, almost as if he erases the other words in the two lines and only leaves two or three left, those remaining words could be the important ones he wants the reader to only focus on. This could be his way of trying to portray as much as possible with as little as possible. Also although he is just a visitor to the US and has only been here three months he speaks about the bridge as if it is his own native bridge, and he says “I clamber, in pride, upon the Brooklyn Bridge” (480). In this sentence and throughout his whole poem there are excessive uses of commas, I believe that is done intentionally so in order to imitate a train of thought of someone who is so excited about a subject that his mind jumps from one thing to another. Which is the case here when Mayakovsky is describing his entrance to the bridge and his stay on, he is obviously very excited to be on it and proud of it and his excitement and praise seeps into his writing through all the commas he puts in.
As much as Mayakovsky praises the Brooklyn Bridge he also sheds light on its darker side. He says “from this spot, jobless men leapt, headlong into the Hudson.” (483). here he acknowledges that although the Brooklyn bridge is amazing there have been some negative actions that occurred on it, such as men committing suicide when they couldn’t take life anymore. But the tone of Mayakovsky when he says that portrays a hint of pride from him that the men actually came to the Brooklyn Bridge to take their lives, for it gives the Brooklyn Bridge more power; a place where one can gain aspiration or meet their doom.
Overall this poem was very interesting to me, ad can be analyzed much more, and some of the half sentences that Mayakovsky writes are juxtaposition to each other and I’m sure he does it intentionally. Throughout the whole poem the tone of the author emits glory for the Brooklyn Bridge but also glory for the author himself; in the last couple of sentences he begins to speak of himself in third person. The Brooklyn Bridge was already a famous bridge and by him deciding to glorify it in a poem, I believe that he secretly also glorified himself along with it.
