Department of Hobos - Department of Bridges - Department of Hart Cranes

It would be an exaggeration to say we're working hard on the extensive endnotes for our illuminated poetry book Prophecy & Doggerel. But I got several e-mails wondering about the reference to "Hart Crane the Hobo" in the recent nonsense poem Evacuate the Species Prayer. The full line - "Flying over Brooklyn like Whitman or Hart Crane the Hobo" - is a reference to how both American poets wrote about crossing into Brooklyn, Whitman by ferry, Hart Crane by Brooklyn Bridge.

We had looked up Brooklyn Bridge poetry because for our William McGonagall projects. He famously disses the Brooklyn Bridge in his poem "An Address to the New Tay Bridge", which inspired us to set it to hot hip-hop beats & ignite a rap battle between Dundee's Tay Bridge (once the longest in the world) & the mighty Brooklyn Bridge. Turns out there's plenty of poetry about the latter, but none quite as doggerelesque as McGonagalls, & certainly none that call out challenges to lesser bridges. Gold Diamonds rapped a lyric by D. B. Steinem, Brooklyn Bridge at Nightfall. But Hart Crane's poem we deemed too good. The whole battle is at our Department of Bridges.

Hart Crane published The Bridge in 1930, two years before he jumped off an ocean liner at age 33. I was trying to echo The Bridge's westward train trip in "Evacuate the Species Prayer", & I couldn't resist the hobo passage in "The River":

Behind

My father’s cannery works I used to see
Rail-squatters ranged in nomad raillery,
The ancient men—wifeless or runaway
Hobo-trekkers that forever search
An empire wilderness of freight and rails.
Each seemed a child, like me, on a loose perch,
Holding to childhood like some termless play.
John, Jake or Charley, hopping the slow freight

—Memphis to Tallahassee—riding the rods,
Blind fists of nothing, humpty-dumpty clods.

Yet they touch something like a key perhaps.
From pole to pole across the hills, the states
—They know a body under the wide rain;
Youngsters with eyes like fjords, old reprobates
With racetrack jargon,—dotting immensity
They lurk across her, knowing her yonder breast
Snow-silvered sumac-stained or smoky blue—
Is past the valley-sleepers, south or west.
—As I have trod the rumorous midnights, too...

I'm not sure is the breast is twelve-year-old Pocahontas's (as the symbol of Natural America), or some sort of Grand Teton. I wondered, considering the hobo connection, if John Hodgman had jumped on any reference in his "Here are the 700 Hobo Names You Have Requested". I don't see any Harts or Cranes, but there's plenty of Johns, Jakes, & Charleys. "Humpty-Dumpty Clods", from the poem, would be a good hobo name. You know there's a website called E-Hobo.com where people have been posting their illustrations of the 700 hobos. Here's #112 Lois "Charles" Ladyfingers:

Also, I just put up a another excerpt mini-book from Prophecy & Doggerel on Scribd, the poem Remember Artie Wongay, with illustrations by Grainne Proinseas (taken from her Beautiful to Forget travelogues) & Olaf Mary Mohammad:

The Bridgiest Muse: What more Brooklyn Bridge Poetry, Part II & Final & Cock-&-Bull!

This website was nearly rent irreparably after a filthy political cleavage & rap-warfare, a few months ago. After hip-hop legend William McGonagall, famed bard of the Tay Bridge in Dundee, dissed:

The New Yorkers boast about their Brooklyn Bridge,
But in comparison to thee it seems like a midge,
Because thou spannest the Silvery Tay
A mile and more longer I venture to say;
Besides the railway carriages are pulled across by a rope,
Therefore Brooklyn Bridge cannot with thee cope;

Brooklynites didn't take this well, & for months it raged back & forth with odes & tight lyrics & nasty radio smear attacks. NOW! When we thought the issue had been resolved by popular election, the Huffington Post goes & publishes a completely one-sided unbalanced article about Brooklyn Bridge poetry, with NOT ONE MENTION of Dundee's famous bridge. And the media gives this a free pass.

It may seem odd for a bridge to be a focal point for poetry, but the Brooklyn Bridge has inspired a remarkable number of good (and some great) poems. The Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky was moved when he first saw it in 1925, as he described in his poem "Brooklyn Bridge:"

...it stretches on cables of string
to the feet of the stars.

I stare
as an eskimo gapes at a train,
I seize on it
as a tick fastens to an ear.
Brooklyn Bridge--
yes....
That's quite a thing!

At the time of Mayakovsky's visit, the American poet Hart Crane was writing his great poem "The Bridge." Crane lived, for a while, in an apartment overlooking the East River, and in his visionary mind the Brooklyn Bridge became a springboard to the spiritual. Here's an excerpt from the opening:

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

In 1956, the beat poet Jack Kerouac celebrated the bridge in another visionary poem (Kerouac's visions may have had a little...help) called "The Brooklyn Bridge Blues":

I looked at the red winter
disgusting dusk of the world,
saw the alleys beyond,
Brooklyn, Wolfe's redbrick
jungle (that I'd only
last night walkt, unto
Gowanus Cana!)----O!
--& I remembered the dreams
the dreams about racks
and Joan Adams and drear
and a tear appeared
in my eye over the river
on the Bridge of Sights
that as soon as I'd
(c r o c o d i l e)
crossed it, had taken
me to the shore
I was looking for!
Svaha! I am
the perfect man
the Buddha of This World

In case you're new to the Beats, you shouldn't worry if the poem doesn't make total sense. You might want to worry (c r o c o d i l e) if it does.

Oh, it makes perfect sense to us, HUFFINGTON POST! You go & lick your bridge on its central girders. "I seize on it as a tick fastens to an ear." Disgusting. True poets know a real bridge when they look on it in so grand array.

Poll Closed! Brooklyn Bridge slams New Tay Bridge in popular vote!

Oh no! The poll in the sidebar is closed & the Brooklyn Bridge has WON by a margin of 53%-46%!! It is a whopping but Pyrrhic victory! If you missed the rap battle / dirty mudslinging campaign, here is a brief recap of the arguments:

19th Century Dundee poet William Topaz McGonagall's "An Address to the New Tay Bridge" rediscovered as a revolutionary proto-hip-hop:


The Brooklyn Bridge's poet D.B. Steinem HAMMERS BACK:


William Topaz McGonagall raps nostalgic about the Tay Bridge Disaster:


A mysteriously-funded PAC releases this radio spot asking Brooklyn Bridge: "BUT IS IT LONG ENOUGH?"

Another radio ad appears in time, maturely reasoning "Tay Bridge, Schmay bridge".

An artist renders the Brooklyn Bridge in bold asian strokes.

The polls close &, in a shocking upset, the Brooklyn Bridge has been voted America's Bridge. The New Tay Bridge loyalists regroup.

an argument for the superiority of the brooklyn bridge

Hip-Hop Legend William McGonagall Returns: The Tay Bridge Disaster

As everyone by now knows, William McGonagall is a nineteenth century rapper. Considered Britain's Worst Poet, he is fastly being revalued as a revolutionary futurist emcee. In collaboration with Gold Diamonds, another track from the forthcoming hip-hop album about bridges, specifically the Tay Bridge near by Dundee. This song predates the New Tay bridge's construction & dedication (listen here & here) memorializing the windy destruction of the great Old Tay Bridge. 1879!!!

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay." [...]

Read the rest of the original poem here. Download this mp3 here. More hip-hop from the itwaslost.org community webloggists here.

TAY BRIDGE, SCHMAY BRIDGE

While visiting the city (nearby Dundee), Ulysses S. Grant commented that the Tay Bridge was "a big bridge for a small city".

BY THE WAY, AMERICA. ABE LINCOLN was just numeraled #1 president of ALL TIME.

YOU KNOW WHO Abe Lincoln REALLY LIKED?

ULYSSES S. GRANT! (american hero who has a good eye for bridge environment aesthetics)

You know who the Tay Bridge likes?

SECRET DEATH

"Tay Bridge" was the codename for the funeral plans for Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother.

WE CANNOT TRUST SECRET DEATH AND WE CANNOT TRUST THE TAY BRIDGE!

Based on my not knowing if the Brooklyn Bridge has been refurbished and my stubborn belief that a TRUE AMERICAN BRIDGE could and would never need to be refurbished, I am betrayed by the Tay bridge (a refurbished bridge).

In 2003, a £20.85 million strengthening and refurbishment project on the bridge won the British Construction Industry Civil Engineering Award, in consideration of the staggering scale and logistics involved. More than 1,000 tonnes of bird droppings were scraped off the ironwork lattice of the bridge using hand tools, and bagged into 25 kg sacks.

PORK BRIDGE SPENDING. IS A REFURBISHED BRIDGE THE SAME BRIDGE?

WHO IS THE "TAY" BRIDGE?

WHY DOES IT NEED REFURBISHING?

Does the Brooklyn Bridge need refurbishing?
Not as far as I know.
Probably not.

Check this out. At the time of the Brooklyn Bridge's completion, the first and last names of the President of the USA and the New York Mayor, individually, were slant rhymes!

President Chester Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson


hm... Queen Elizabeth

Also,

George Parker (1870 – 1936) was one of the most audacious con men in American history. He made his living selling New York's public landmarks to unwary tourists. His favorite object for sale was the Brooklyn Bridge, which he sold twice a week for years.

And it doesn't stop there:

Other public landmarks he sold included the original Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty. George had many different methods for making his sales. When he sold Grant's Tomb, he would often pose as the general's grandson.

George Parker, Ulysses S. Grant, Abe Lincoln, Brooklyn Bridge, America.

DO WE WANT A refurbished, secret death UNAMERICAN Bridge?

NO!
WE WANT THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

Crickets & Rats on the Brooklyn Bridge

I notice it's been a week since my political attack ad hit the radio waves - the Brooklyn Bridge: IS IT LONG ENOUGH? And yet, I haven't heard a peep from Brooklyn.

The rap battle between the New Tay Bridge & the Brooklyn Bridge can be traced to several "hip-hop" songs, all available in our 2009 debut EP, rap songs about bridges, from bridges, for bridges. They are here.

I mention this all, because I have added a poll to the lefthand sidebar, just below the tweetosphere feed, to get a feel for how the electorate is responding to the attacks, before the 2009 election. James Carville worries that William McGonagall's negatives may have been ratcheted way up after all the radio spots, but we're in crunch time here Turd Blossom.

Our friend Dr Eley-Nelson was kind enough to e-mail this doggerel in support of our hip-hop work set to classic bad 19th Century poetry about bridges:

From: "Dr. ___ Nelson" _____@gmail.com

To: "James Welsch" _@itwaslost.org
Subject: Benefactum

Nice work. I'm sure McGonagall's spirit is suffused with warm well being. Or rather,

James Welsch, you have to music put
A poem about trains and their attendant soot
Or rather of the bridge's o'er which they roll
Which strikes this writer as being rather droll
Your take on the work of William McGonagall
Will surely be well received by all.

Brooklyn Bridge Attack Ad: "BUT IS IT LONG ENOUGH??"

D.B. Steinem says his Brooklyn Bridge is the "fulfillment of an artists dream."

But do the facts check out!!??

At fifty-nine hundred feet long, the so-called BROOKLYN bridge stretches almost five thousand feet shorter than the beautiful NEW TAY RAIL BRIDGE in Dundee.

Is that long enough for America?

At 10,710 feet, the New Tay Bridge is the longest railway bridge of the present day.

William Topaz McGonagall wrote that the beautiful New Tay Bridge is "strong enough all windy storms to defy".

Can we even trust the Brooklyn Bridge to stand up to the wimpiest little gale?
Can America risk finding out?

Doing the most basic investigation on the Brooklyn Bridge on the WIKIPEDIA, we learned that suspension bridge-making pioneer John A. Roebling, whilst surveying for the Brooklyn Bridge, got his foot "badly injured by a ferry, pinning it against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus." What's the matter, John A. Roebling, jaw too LOCKED UP to complete the Brooklyn Bridge? Succeeding him, his son Washington Roebling, came down with a little case of THE BENDS. Does this sound like confident leadership to you, or does it sound like typical New York politics, typical Kennedyesque nepotism? LOCKJAW? DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS? That doesn't sound like competent bridgebuilding, that sounds like DEAD bridgebuilding.

"Besides," says William Topaz McGonagall, "the railway carriages [on the beautiful NEW TAY BRIDGE] are pulled across by a rope, / Therefore Brooklyn Bridge cannot with thee cope."

...is it long enough?...
...wimpiest little gale...
...typical Kennedyesque nepotism...

Sorry, D.B. Steinem, the fulfillment of the artist's dream was built in Dundee in 1883.

Vote NEW TAY BRIDGE in 2009.
Strong enough for Dundee.
Strong enough for America.

FOUND! Rare take of New Tay Bridge by McGonagall Sister and Brother-In-Law

Didn't Hear a Peep from the New Tay Bridge

Unearthed: D.B. Steinman Records Rap Track Regarding Bridge Design and Beauty Before McGonagall, Before His Own Birth!

Introducing Hip-Hop Legend William McGonagall with Gold Diamonds: "An Address to the New Tay Bridge"

Last Burns Night, after our second bottle of Scotch, & a full evening of Robert Burns' delicious poetry & veggie haggis, we got a hat-tip from Miss Williams that there was a 19th Century Scottish poet who had been voted "Britain's worst poet". We quickly found some of William McGonagall's work & ended the night with his amazing "An Address to the New Tay Bridge". We proposed several projects, including a McGonagall Night some other evening in the year, dedicated to the worst poetry, perhaps with absinthe & spam; & also a hip-hop version of McGonagall's poems. (The New Tay Bridge poem is oddly suited to the genre.) I'm proud to present Mr McGonagall's debut as a rap star, in his first collaboration with the great Gold Diamonds. I warn you, there is also at least one more setting of this poem to funky beats, & probably even more coming, I'm worried there might have to be an entire album of just New Tay Bridges. Any resemblance to the MC Pseudo-Dionysius is a zeitgeistical convergence. Presenting WILLIAM McGONAGALL.

An Address to the New Tay Bridge

BEAUTIFUL new railway bridge of the Silvery Tay,
With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array,
And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye
Strong enough all windy storms to defy.
And as I gaze upon thee my heart feels gay,
Because thou are the greatest railway bridge of the present day,
And can be seen for miles away
From North, South, East or West of the Tay
On a beautiful and clear sunshiny day,
And ought to make the hearts of the "Mars" boys feel gay,
Because thine equal nowhere can be seen,
Only near by Dundee and the bonnie Magdalen Green.

Read the rest of the original poem here.
Download the mp3 here.