SOURCE: "The Bridge," in On the Modernist Long Poem, University of Iowa Press, pp. 47-67.

In the following essay, Dickie discusses the problems Crane encountered in dealing with the form of the long modernist poem.

It is hazardous to begin writing a long poem at the end, and all the more so with a long poem that will rely on the poet's moments of inspiration. Hart Crane's difficulties in writing The Bridge may be traced to this peculiar method of composition and to the assumptions about form that it embodies. Crane finished the final section of The Bridge first, and he called it "Atlantis." With that section completed, it was hard to begin the poem, harder still because Crane saw the ending as "symphonic in including the convergence of all the strands separately detailed in antecedent sections of the poem—Columbus, conquests of water, land, etc., Pokahantus, subways...