Need Help: Literary Question

[cutie pie]

Actually, I need two things.

1. Names of well-known bridges, i.e. Golden Gate Bridge. Doesn't necessary have to be just in the United States.

2. Literary references to bridges - a scene in a book or play that takes place on a bridge, a poem perhaps. (Something a tad better than Bridges of Madison County.)

I'm working on an article for a writing class and I'm having trouble coming up with an angle. . .maybe this will help.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Darkthought]

Bridge Over the River Kwai


Famous Bridge, made a movie about it.

 

[Guest]

1-Jeff.

 

[Darkthought]

A bunch of other famous bridges:

Brooklyn
Akashi-Kaikyo
Sydney Harbour Bridge
Storbaelt
Le Pont De Normandie
Tsing Ma
Clifton Suspension Bridge
Humber Bridge
Tower Bridge
Ponte Vecchio
The Rialto
Menai Straits
Varrazano Narrows

 

[cutie pie]

Darkthought - excellent list! Thank you.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Hart Crane (1899-1932)

From THE BRIDGE -- Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge


How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,

Shedding white rings of tumult, building high

Over the chained bay waters Liberty--



Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes

As apparitional as sails that cross

Some page of figures to be filed away;

--Till elevators drop us from our day ...



I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights

With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene

Never disclosed, but hastened to again,

Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;



And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced

As though the sun took step of thee, yet left

Some motion ever unspent in thy stride, --

Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!



Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft

A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,

Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,

A jest falls from the speechless caravan.



Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,

A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;

All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn ...

Thy cables, breathe the North Atlantic still.



And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,

Thy guerdon ... Accolade thou dost bestow

Of anonymity time cannot raise:

Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.



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...



O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,

Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

 

[Darkthought]

No problem.

 

[Rex1960]

Actually, I need two things.

1. Names of well-known bridges, i.e. Golden Gate Bridge. Doesn't necessary have to be just in the United States.

2. Literary references to bridges - a scene in a book or play that takes place on a bridge, a poem perhaps. (Something a tad better than Bridges of Madison County.)

I'm working on an article for a writing class and I'm having trouble coming up with an angle. . .maybe this will help.

Thanks in advance.

How about "Ponte Vecchio" in Firenze, Italy. This "Old Bridge" crosses the river Arno from the very center of the city to that old pitoresque Palazzo Pity. A very romantic medieval scenery....

"Ponte di Rialto" in Venice, Italy. You might find poems by Marcel Proust somewhere...



edited to post

it's Florence in English and Venezia in Italian.... confused the languages

 

[Starblayde]

British bridges:

Severn Bridge, Humber Bridge, Tower Bridge, Millenium Bridge, Tyne Brigde

London Bridge (that some American bought thinking it was Tower Bridge) as in the poem/nursery rhyme 'London Bridge is falling down'

 

[MaxSebastian]

Names of well-known bridges:

Ironbridge - Shropshire, England, the very first bridge in the world to be made of iron.

The Floating Bridges, Seattle, Washington

The Bridge of Sighs - Venice, Italy (plus a copy in Oxford, England)

Pont Neuf - Paris, France

Stirling Bridge - big battle between the Scots and the English there


Cutural references to bridges:

Those bridges from 'A Bridge Too Far'

London Bridge is Falling Down - old English song (nursery rhyme)

Jeff Bridges, the Big Lebowski (okay, maybe he doesn't count)

 

[cutie pie]

I'm adding "research help" to the list of reasons why I come to Lit.

Excellent information everyone. . .I'm getting some good ideas now!

 

[phrodeau]

Info on London Bridge can be found at www.lakehavasu.com - the bridge now stands in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

 

[Killswitch]

The Bridge of Sighs is my personal favorite.......it's that lil bridge between well......you know

K.S.

 

[cutie pie]

The Bridge of Sighs is my personal favorite.......it's that lil bridge between well......you know

K.S.

believe it or not this is not going to be an erotic piece. . .but I'll save this tidbit of information for another story.

 

[leavursmilin]

Confederation Bridge in Canada is the most famous. It is 12 kilometeres long.

 

[Guest]

The Bridge of Sighs is my personal favorite.......it's that lil bridge between well......you know

K.S.

....between John's College Cambridge New and Second ( I think) Courts.

 

[Starblayde]

Wayne Bridge, the Southampton Left-sided defender
Michael Bridges, the Leeds United Striker

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

The nursery rhyme about London Bridge Falling Down is a reference to the original bridge(s), made of wood, which housed several business, none of which passed Medieval fire safety codes, and were constantly setting the thing ablaze.

Steve Brodie made himself famous for "jumping" off the Brooklyn Bridge (it was a hoax, he used a dummy). He made a fortune telling his story on vaudeville stages, and his money was no good anywhere in Brooklyn. Someone ought to make a fucking movie about him.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel.

ODE TO BILLY JOE
Bobbie Gentry
Northridge Music Company/All Nations Music (ASCAP)

It was the 3rd of June another sleepy dusty delta day
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was bailin' hay
And at dinnertime we stoped and walked back
To the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door ya'll remember
To wipe your feet
And then she said I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw
Ridge
Today Billy Joe McCallister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And papa said to Mama as he passed around the black-eyed
peas
Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense,pass the biscuits
please
There's five more acres in the lower 40 I got to plow
And Mama said it weas a shame about Billy Joe anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw
Ridge
And now Billy Joe McCallister's jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge

An' brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billy Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carol County Picture Show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night
I'll have another piece of apple pie, you know it don't seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday up on Choctaw Ridge
And now you tell me Billy Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge

Mama said to me, "Child what's happened to your appetite?
I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, stopped by today
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh by the way
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw
Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwin'something off the
Tallahatchie Bridge

A year has come and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy
Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson they bought a store in
Tupelo
There was a virus goin' round, papa caught it and he died last
spring
And now mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw
Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

 

[Pyper]

The nursery rhyme about London Bridge Falling Down is a reference to the original bridge(s), made of wood, which housed several business, none of which passed Medieval fire safety codes, and were constantly setting the thing ablaze.

My friend did a research project on that nursery rhyme. She told me that the rest of the verses actually reference human sacrifice: the practice of building human bodies into bridges to prevent their collapse.

 

[The Heretic]

While we are talking about falling bridges - don't forget the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which collapsed 62 years ago due to wind induced vibrations some short months after it was completed. Or the I-90 floating bridge between Seattle and Mercer Island that sank.

 

[Pyper]

While we are talking about falling bridges - don't forget the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which collapsed 62 years ago due to wind induced vibrations some short months after it was completed.

I saw a video of that in physics class. It was so cool!