SOURCE: "Two Views of 'The Bridge '," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 2, Spring, 1981, pp. 191-205.

In the following essay, Cowley explains what he sees as two different ways to read The Bridge: "integrationists, " who assert that the poem has a unified plot and vision, and "dispersionists, " who believe that the poem is inherently and deliberately fragmented.

Fifty years after the book was first published, little doubt remains that Hart Crane's The Bridge is a monument of American poetry. Among the longer poetic works I should place it below Whitman's "Song of Myself," but above almost everything else; and this is a judgment shared by many critics. The argument that continues to rage is about where its principal virtue lies. Should we reread it now as something unified, a special type of epic, or is it an aggregation of fifteen lyrics, most of them having a rather...