Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman both were American poets who lived in the 19th century who strayed from the traditional style of writing poetry and formed their own individual style of writing which became the unique American style of poetry. Their lifestyles and writing styles were extremely different, as they shared little in common. The dissimilarities in these two poets are in the way they composed their poems and possibly in the content of the poems. Whitman established a unique style in the form of using free verse and Dickinson in her peculiar use of punctuation to establish her unique style of poetry.
Walt Whitman’s poems were written in free verse and very lengthy; Song of Myself is over thirteen thousand lines long and has 52 sections. The purpose of using free verse is for the author to create their own form and to emphasize certain words and sounds. Prior to this the author had fit the content into particular form of length and meter (College of the Canyons). Not only are his poems long but they are complex with lines of varying length and he often jumps from topic to topic. He writes from experience and often has Nature and Death as a theme. Emily Dickinson also frequently had death as a theme. Her poems are short, written in four line stanza with an ABCB rhyming scheme. They are lyrics, possibly hymns. An example of this is
“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--
Or rather--He passed us--
Th...
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...ng styles they were a force that changed the style of writing poetry in American by rejecting traditional writing techniques and developing their own style which is still influential today. Whitman is best known for his use of free verse and Dickinson is best known for her use of odd punctuation.
Works Cited
College of the Canyons. "Walt Whitman." 2011. TLC/College of the Canyons. Web Page. 11 December 2013. http://www.canyons.edu/offices/tlc/Handouts/PDFs/Free%20Verse.pdf
Dickinson, Emily. Baym, Nina, editor. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 1659-1706. Poem.
"Emily Dickinson." The Academy of American Poets. Emily Dickinson. 1997. Web Page. 11 December 2013. < http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155>
Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself." Baum, Nina, General Editor. Norton's Anthology of American Literature.
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 definition of poetry, instead of becoming more selective and exact, has become a much more broad and open minded classification of literature. From It's beginning's in romanticist Puritan literature, to its more modernistic function on present society, poetry has become a way to blend the psychological side of human intellect, with the emotional side of human intuition and curiosity. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were two early poets from the late 19th century. Unlike Walt, Emily liked to write at home, she was a more secluded author who enjoyed to look out the window for inspiration. Walt on the other hand loved to travel. He found inspiration through nature and the diversity of thriving cultures throughout the world. Although these writers found inspiration from two different methods, their poems have distinct similarities in theme, images, and main ideas.
Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
Walt Whitman’s hard childhood influenced his work greatly, he was an uneducated man but he managed to become one of the most known poets. Whitman changed poetry through his work and is now often called the father of free verse. Especially through Leaves of Grass he expressed his feelings and sexuality to world and was proud of it. He had a different view at life, his hard childhood, and his sexuality that almost no one understood made him introduce a new universal theme to the world. Almost all critics agree that Walt Whitman was one of the most influential and innovative poet. Karl Shapiro says it best, “The movement of his verses is the sweeping movement of great currents of living people with general government and state”.
Dickinson, on the other hand, was a free-style writer. She was carefree of how her writings do not include any type of meter or structure. She did not use standard punctuation. Instead, she referred to the use of dashes, unsystematic capitalization, and broken meter. It is not clear as to why she chose such a unique style of writing, but it worked for her. She was not concerned with correctness but with structure that would include considerate features. In “Defrauded I a Butterfly,” Dickinson left little room for meter or style used from European models in her time being it only consisted on two lines. Also, in “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” the reader may recognize that the she did not use a traditional rhyme scheme that would usually be able to identify in poetry. She used AABC instead of the more noticeable and most often used ABAB or a more rare scheme ABCB.
Could it be that their originality sprouts from the fact that they have both been able to express so humanly the cries of the soul while at the same time leaving mysteries and ambiguity for the readers' minds to personalize to their own life experiences? Their distinct styles enabled them to expresses exactly what was on their minds with words, leaving behind all inhibitions. The themes of their compositions and the moral issues captured our attention. I think the reader was able to "feel" he was truly experiencing the story simply because so much was left as a mystery for our unconscious to reflect upon… I am convinced that this is the key element that makes both Whitman and Poe successful writers.
In order to understand any comparison of the two author's one must first read and comprehend that Emerson's writing are clearly an instruction manual that Whitman adopts in order to become an outstanding poet. Emerson believes we must,
Both of the authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson represent similar opinions through different types of writing. Emerson himself is more extrinsic while Dickinson represents herself motivated intrinsically. Moreover, both of the authors are inspired from different sources; Emerson finds himself inspired from the outside world, while Dickinson’s inspiration comes from an unknown force within her body. Emerson represents and shows masculinity in his writings while using fierce language, while on the other hand Dickinson represents a feminine side. Even though both of authors convince us in a way that they are very different from each other while we look at their theories and writings, but in the end we find their faith very similar. I will argue ambiguities that are found on their writings toward faith and their rejection of religious authority.
The points of comparison these two writers share are that they were both iconic poets of their day and that they wrote in what is referred to as “black dialect.” The differences between them are their cultural and educational backgrounds.
Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.
One of the similarity within transcendentalism between Whitman and Dickinson is the nonconformity in their poems. Ralph Waldo Emerson, central figure of the transcendentalism, stated in one of his works, “Self-Reliance,” “what I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think” (Emerson). Emerson stated that each individuals should do what they desired to do, not what society wants them to. With this perspective, Whitman and Dickinson both created their own poetic style that differs from the traditional stanzas and rhyme scheme. Whitman was known as one of the first poet to break away from the traditional poem form and replaced with free verse form. "Leaves of Grass was criticized because of Whitman's exaltation of the
Loneliness was an important characteristic of both poet's lives during the writing years. Whitman, whose sexuality has been questioned, was never one for social interaction. Much of his time was spent writing or editing newspapers such as the Long Island Star and the Brooklyn Daily Times (Whitman XV). Dickinson, whose life was similar to Whitman's in a social sense, lived in a different atmosphere. Emily lived in Amherst which was a far cry from the hustle an bustle of Whitman's life in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. She never married, living alone in her home for the majority of her life (Dickinson 128). The loneliness, along with the inspiration from nature (a major characteristic of Romantic writing), are two things that can be seen in the two poems that we are about to take an in depth look at. In addition to these items we can also see a possible attempt by Whitman and Dickinson to keep their real life away from public view (even though they were not immediately published), instead making their lives seem joyous.
By Whitman making his works synonymous it truly recognizes him as a great American Poet. With Whitman using free verse poetry he was able to change the original idea of structure with the rhythm of cadence, this helped people to emphasize poetry as an expression. With Whitman he uses non-orthodox type of structuring his poetry; he traditionally does not have a type of length for his works of stanzas, poems, or his lines. On to the case with Dickinson she did write with a defined structure to her works. Dickinson’s style of writing used a ballad stanza, these were four line stanzas.
Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost both think that individuality is very important to a person equally like Ralph Emerson. Although they may have a lot in common these poets are different in many ways. Both Frost and Dickinson were American poets and were both from New England. A big similarity between Frost and Dickinson both talk about death. Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost both talk about the power of nature in their poetry. Frost and Dickinson have a reasonable evidence on why human beings should live life to their own agenda but, what if that person cannot stop living somebody else dreams? How can these poems help people break away for society and become a strong confidence individual person?
The poem has set a certain theme and tone but no definite rhyme. In this poem, the poet explores into a thought of the self, the all-encompassing "I," sexuality, democracy, the human body, and what it means to live in the modern world. He addresses that the human body is sacred and every individual human is divine. Hence, Whitman was known for writing poems about individualism, democracy, nature, and war.