SOURCE: "The Structure of Hart Crane's The Bridge '," in the University of Kansas City Review, Vol. 24, March, 1958, pp. 225-38.

In the following essay, Slote defends The Bridge against critical charges of lacking structure, noting in particular Crane's own assertion that the poem is symphonic in structure rather than adhering to a traditional narrative form.}

Because contemporary literature has offered few enough long poems, it is unfortunate that Hart Crane's The Bridge¹ has been generally held unworthy as a whole, though poetically rich in texture. While many have believed in the poem, following the favorable tone of Malcolm Cowley's early review,² critical judgments have been cut more generally from the whole cloth of the Tate-Winters "archetypal" pattern.³ Crane's long poem is ironically and somewhat sadly viewed as a shape without form, a bridge with uncertain connections, as chaos come again and lost Atlantis doubly lost. But there are...