The Bridge comprises 15 lyric poems of varying length and scope. In style, it mixes near-Pindaric declamatory metre, free verse, sprung metre, Elizabethan diction and demotic language at various points between alternating stanzas and often in the same stanzas. In terms of its acoustical coherence, it requires its reader, novelly, to follow both end-paused and non end-paused enjambments in a style Crane intended to be redolent of the flow of the Jazz or Classical music he tended to listen to when he wrote. Though the poem follows a thematic progress, it freely juggles various points in time. The University of Illinois' Modern American Poetry website analyzes the symbolic meaning of "the bridge" as central image throughout the book:
When Crane positions himself under the shadows of the bridge, he is, in one sense, simply the poet of the romantic tradition, the observer who stands aside the better to see; but he is, in another sense, the gay male cruising in an area notorious for its casual sex. Even the bridge itself, the Brooklyn Bridge that is the central object of the poem, was strongly identified in Crane’s own mind with [Crane's lover] Emil Opffer, to whom Voyages was dedicated. The appearance of the bridge secretly encrypts a highly personal memory and a specific presence in the text. Crane’s "epic of America" gets underway as a personal quest, as a poem divided against itself, in devotion to an urban setting that encourages social diversity, with secret inscriptions that retain their meanings to which only a privileged few are accessible.[4]
"Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge" is the short lyrical ode to the Brooklyn Bridge and New York City which opens the sequence and serves as an introduction (and New York City's urban landscape remains a dominant presence throughout the book). After beginning with this ode, "Ave Maria" begins the first longer sequence labeled Roman numeral I which describes Columbus' eastward return from his accidental voyage to the Americas. The title of the piece is based upon the fact that Columbus attributed his crew's survival across the Atlantic Ocean to "the intercession of the Virgin Mary."[5] The second major section of the poem, "Powhatan's Daughter," is divided into five parts, and one well-known part, entitled "The River," follows a group of vagabonds, in the 20th century, who are traveling west through America via train. In "The River," Crane incorporates advertisements and references minstrel shows. He claimed in a letter that "the rhythm [in this section] is jazz."[5] The section also includes the story of Pocahontas (who was "Powhatan's Daughter") and a section on the fictional character Rip Van Winkle. The fourth section of "Powhatan's Daughter," entitled "The Dance," contains the line "O Appalachian Spring!" from which dancer and choreographer Martha Graham took the title of her ballet Appalachian Spring, scored by composer Aaron Copland.
Other major sections of the poem include "Cape Hatteras" (the longest individual section of the poem), "Quaker Hill," "The Tunnel," and "Atlantis," the rapturous final section that returns the poem's focus back to the Brooklyn Bridge, and which was actually the first part of the overall poem finished despite its reservation for the end.
