Minnehaha Minnehaha Minnehaha is a fictional Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha and comes to a tragic end. The name, often said to mean "laughing water", literally translates to "waterfall" or "rapid water" in Dakota. The figure of Minnehaha inspired later art works such as paintings, sculpture and music. "The Death of Minnehaha" is a frequent subject for paintings. Minnehaha Falls and her death scene inspired themes in the 'New World' symphony by Antonín Dvořák. Longfellow's poem was set in a cantata trilogy,
The Bridge (long poem) Brooklyn Bridge, and which was actually the first part of the overall poem finished despite its reservation for the end. Upon its publication, "The Bridge" received mostly negative reviews. Yvor Winters, a contemporary and friend of Crane's who had praised Crane's previous book, "White Buildings", wrote one such review, in which he associated Crane's book with Modernist works by James Joyce and William Carlos Williams. Due to his disparaging views toward Modernism as a whole, Winters viewed such an association negatively. In Winter's own words, "The Bridge" "has no narrative framework and so lacks the formal unity of an epic."