While Wordsworth formatted his poetry into beautiful ballads, Whitman wrote in more relatable poems, some of which truly did not follow any form. According to William E. H. Meyer Jr., “Indeed, the very substance of Whitman 's ‘barbaric yawp,’ in contrast to Wordsworth 's ‘plaintive numbers,’ is the revolutionary and unbridgeable gap that exists between a ‘song of myself’ and a ‘prelude’ or ‘lyrical ballad.’”(Meyer 83). While Wordsworth keeps more structure and regulation in his ballads, Whitman does what feels most effective. This allows for Whitman to be slightly more organic in form than Wordsworth. However, this difference can also be seen as an addition to Wordsworth, as Wordsworth advocated for organic form.
Whitman liked to use bible quotes or references in his poetry where as Dickinson almost didn’t believe in the church, and went about worshiping in her own way. The two were very different poets, but with that said, they helped shape poetry in America still to this day. While ... ... middle of paper ... ...he has an original use of meters set her apart from others. Both Whitman and Dickinson use people and common objects of everyday things in a smaller context. While both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson's works seem to be quite different from the outside, they share many similarities.
While Whitman tends to leave little to the imagination, Dickinson uses very few, carefully selected words, forcing the reader contemplate the meaning of the poem and create his own image of the scene being described. Another outstanding difference between these poems is the rhyme scheme and meter used. Whitman's poem contains no obvious meter or rhyme, but is written freely and without any apparent structure. Dickinson, on the other hand, uses an abcbdefe slant rhyme scheme, as well as an obvious meter.
The style of this poem is Dramatic Poetry. Dramatic Poetry is “a poem structured so as to present a scene or series of scene as in a work of drama” (A4). It is a Dramtic Poem because it is mainly a conversation between the two characters and is without a narrator. For example: Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak But now I’m bewitched by your delicate... ... middle of paper ... ... cost of junk. (Kennedy 884) However, despite the differences in the poems, some might think there are more similarities.
Emily Dickinson kept a fixed structure in her poems and used slant rhymes, which was a change from that found in previous styles of poetry. While Whitman and Dickinson had extremely dissimilar personalities
Whitman argued the public was placing too much emphasis on the sexual content and not fully embracing his work as a whole. He held too much pride to blatantly change or censor his work but over time did make subtle alterations and omission of lines (Killingsworth). Early on, Whitman was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1843 essay, The Poet (“Author Profile.”). Emerson called for an American poet to also celebrate the spirit and nature of man, to celebrate individualism instead of embracing the social order of things (Willcox). Whitman, optimistic with the new changes in American literature, set out to answer Emerson and embarked on a journey of becoming a very unique and great American poet (“Author Profile.”).
The characters represent conflicting ideas, yet neither of which would be conceivable without the other. Both characters can only function in the poem when supported by one another, if one character were to be removed, the binary opposition would be removed and the allegory drawn from either Una or Duessa would be less productive. The two episodes I will be investigating are Canto I, Stanzas 4... ... middle of paper ... ...ly representing someone or something more true to life. Roberts is right in saying “Spenser’s allegorical poem demands the active engagement of its reader to produce allegory”(1). Although he never permits to say it directly, he is also right in noting that close reading of The Faerie Queene provides a much broader ranger of allegory.
Both poems have some kind of music though there is no rhyme scheme, due to the use of free verse. They both use repetition of some words. Dickinson repeated the words “we passed”. While Whitman repeated several words such as “waking”, “longing”, “withdraw” and “better”. They both used descriptive language.
The first, ‘Marged’, is lacking in emotion and the second, ‘Do Not Go Gentle’, does more than accommodate the passion, it emphasises and releases the feelings felt by the poet. ‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke is a Shakespearean sonnet, with three quatrains and a couplet at the end, however the poet has altered the form to change the style of the poem. For example the lines do not have ten syllables as a normal sonnet but vary in length. Also there is only a half-rhyme scheme with words such as ‘bed’ and ‘died’ in the first quatrain on alternate lines. It could be argued that the tight structure of the sonnet restrains the passion felt because of the syllables but as Gillian Clarke has ignored this rule and has different numbers of syllables this sonnet does not constrain passion.
This is further evidenced by Wordsworth, who said the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ should be seen as ‘an experiment’, consisting of ‘poems… materially different from those under the general approbation… present bestowed’ and that they may be read by some with a ‘common dislike’. One aspect of the style of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ that caused much contempt at the time of publication is the simple language, an important characteristic of the poems. Wordsworth tries to avoid the ‘falsehood of description’, instead preferring to record reality in ordinary language rather than attempting a poetic diction. Unlike many of his contemporary poets, Wordsworth did not attempt an ornate and elevated poetic style adorned with extravagant metaphors. However, this does not mean the language is colloquial, but that Wordsworth takes his language and subjects from ‘ordinary life’ hoping to show ‘the language really spoken by men’.