The beauty of life can be seen through the point of view of a well written poem. A poet can see the beauty in death, or the calmness and unity between man, nature, and God. through figurative language that can be interpreted in multiple ways, they convey deeper meanings than what writing on the paper. It is what lies between the lines that have opened the eyes of fans of poetry for centuries.Two amazing poets are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Whitman and Dickinson are both very peaceful in their styles of writing and do not cause or focus on any type tough or worrying topics and subjects. Dickinson’s and Whitman’s styles, contents and meanings differ when compared to each other. To begin, Dickinson has a intriguing view upon death. As a person’s life drifts away, they can be scared or they can accept it. Dickinson’s poem “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” describes the last moments of a person in a room as death takes her. “I heard a Fly buzz when I died The Stillness in the …show more content…
In “Because I could not stop for Death” she takes the process of passing away as a gentle ride. The lines “Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me –The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.” (Dickinson lines 1 - 4) explain the movement to immortality as a carriage coming to pick her up. The line “Because I did not stop for death” refers to her not stoping for death to take her but let death catch up with her in a way. When death has come, he is depicted in a different way, not the way that is usually accepted like a hooded skeleton. She portrays death as a gentlemanly figure. He welcomes a passed person into immortality calmly and with manners. This is similar to how death is depicted in the poem “Incident in the Rose Garden” when death is tipping his hat as he greets the man he’s come to claim the life
Although Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had different styles of writing, they did convey the same attitude and acceptance toward death. Both Dickinson’s “712” and Whitman’s “From “Song of Myself” poems showed death was something natural that had to happen and we need to accept it at a certain point in life. Both wrote poems about it as if it were no big deal, but something peaceful. Both poets used much imagery to convey this message very clear to their audience.
The lives of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson have many similarities and differences. Here, we will focus on the similarities in their lives in order to bring to attention a correlation between Whitman's poem I Saw in Louisiana a Live-oak Growing and Dickinson's poem # 1510. Both poets wrote during the time of Romanticism, even though Whitman was Dickinson's senior by some eleven years. This however did not influence the way the writing styles of many of their poems coincided.
The opinions on the war of the upper half of the country were manifested in the then developing American poetry. Led by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, this movement included many Northern poets who wrote in support of reform and tolerance. The pair were two such authors, each taking an accepting approach to the persecuted groups of America. This likeness continues with the subject of war, even when their poetry on other topics differed. Historically, Whitman is identified by his patriotic poems as homages to America, backed up by his extraversion; while Dickinson was an isolated soul, a fact that translates into her writing. Due to its seriousness, war demands somber poetry from both the pensive Dickinson and typically upbeat Whitman, giving the two contrasting personalities a common ground.
During the time in American history known as the, several poets began to stray from the traditional methods of writing poetry. Among these poets were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. While these writer's led drastically different lifestyles and had drastically different styles of writing, the messages they presented through their writing were often surprisingly similar. Whitman's poem "Song of Myself, No.6" and Dickinson's poem "This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies" are examples of pieces which, on the surface, appear completely different, but in fact contain several similarities. Indeed, several similarities and differences can be found between these two poems.
This allowed her to spend her time writing and lamenting, instead of seeking out a husband or a profession. Eventually, she limited her outside activities to going to church. In her early twenties, she began to pray and worship on her own. This final step to total seclusion clearly fueled her obsession with death, and with investigating the idea of an afterlife. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson rides in a carriage with the personification of Death, showing the constant presence of death in her life.
Dickinson 's poem uses poetic devices of personification to represent death, she represents death as if it were a living being. Dickinson 's capitalization of the word “DEATH”, causes us to see death as a name, in turn it becomes noun, a person, and a being, rather than what it truly is, which is the culminating even of human life. The most notable use of this, is seen in the very first few lines of the poem when Dickinson says “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me”. In her poem Dickinson makes death her companion, as it is the person who is accompanying her to her grave. She states that death kindly stopped for her and she even goes as far as to give death the human ability to stop and pick her up. The occasion of death through Dickinson use of personification makes it seem like an interaction between two living beings and as a result the poem takes on a thoughtful and light hearted tone. The humanization of death makes the experience more acceptable and less strange, death takes on a known, familiar, recognizable form which in turn makes the experience more relatable. As the poem
Though these authors looked like twins lived during the same era, examining their literature demonstrates that they had little influence on one another. The parallels between Dickinson and Poe include their dark Romantic subject matter, though Dickinson is considered a Modernist, and their use of first-person narrators who display drastic psychological states under the presence of death. Aside from these indistinct similarities, they have many differences in how they write about life and death. In “Because I could not stop for Death,” Dickinson characterizes mortality as a guide to the afterlife, while Poe portrays death as intimidating in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and like a thief in “Annabel Lee.” In addition to this, Poe’s illustration of nature in “The Raven” is also darker than Dickinson’s view in “Nature is what we see.” Dickinson believes nature is godlike and shows more of a Romantic view of nature than Poe, who uses symbols of birds to connect the outdoors with mortality. When considering these works, Poe is a more dark, Anti-Transcendentalist writer compared to Dickinson. Further, he writes short stories and poems that horrify the reader while Dickinson writes dynamic, unorthodox poetry that is difficult to compare to other writers. The eccentric minds of these authors is ultimately expressed in their provocative literature that continues to influence writers
Comparing and Contrasting Dickinson’s Poems, Because I Could Not Stop for Death and I Heard a Fly Buzz - When I Died
The article stated, “This poem was written dactylic hexameter, a form of rhythmic scheme in poetry”. Emily Dickinson was another famous writer at this time who had a huge impact on poetry. She was one of the first poets who wrote their poems in the first person. She created a different style of poetry, language expressing it through her work. Most of Emily’s work was about something she enjoyed about life. The article stated, “She used pictures from nature, religion, law and various others for her themes most of Dickinson poems are lyrics like short stories, poems which are compressed through thought and feeling”. One major difference between all the poets, was that Emily Dickinson did not title her work. Most of her writing was described by the first stanza. One of her special gifts as a poet is her ability to describe abstract concepts with concrete images. The article stated, “Most of her abstracts, ideas and material things are used to explain each other, but the relation between them remains complex and unpredictable”. She mainly focused on word of choice rather than a tryout with form or structure. Walt Whitman was a free verse poetry style writer. He was also
Emily Dickinson wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime that dealt with death. She seemed to have an almost morbid fascination with the subject. Her poem "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" is one of the many poems she wrote about this ghastly topic. The symbols she used make this poem interesting because they can be interpreted on more than one level. The punctuation and capitalization used also give the poem an abstract quality. Like much of Dickinson's poetry, this poem is both startling and somber.
So what it really comes down to is that Whitman and Dickinson both have their distinct topics but they both are trying to convey their idea about either God, self, or death and Human Body, and sexuality they are trying to enlighten ones knowledge of topics and steer ones mind to truth and what they truly believe is right and what is wrong.
In?Because I could not stop for Death,? Emily Dickinson uses many poetic devices to make her poem stand out among other poems centered around death. Dickinson's use of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice adds to the overall effect of her view of?death? itself. It is a sham. The way she structured this poem helps her stand out as one of the greatest poets of all time.
For Dickinson, on the contrary, death is not something unreal. As the author has written "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me..." After reading these two lines the reader "imagines the picture of Death being a human which joins the author during the ride" . Dickinson tries to portray the characteristics of death in the poem. Stating that there is eternity after death, the author alludes both the possibility of the life after death and absolute zero-ness of it. Unlike Plath, Dickinson not only talks about the notion of death, but personalizes it. The reader feels that the author in fact...
Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are both considered as the most original poets who has boldly revolutionized the subject and style of 20th-century American poetry. Both the poets come from vastly different backgrounds but they share common inspirations but in a distinctive way. They both lived polar opposite personal lives as Walt was friendly, outgoing and influential, while Emily was very simple, shy, isolate and content. A lot of poems written by them were based on nature, death, and immortality and they focused on the importance of individualism in the society like in “I Hear America Singing” by Walt and “Much Madness is most divine Sense” by Emily. Together, they both have huge hands to shape the American poetry, and their influences
In Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” Dickinson portrays what it is like to go through the process of dying. According to Mark Spencer of the Explicator, the speaker portrays death as a two-step process. It is said that this particular poem makes more sense if read from the perspective that reconciliation with God is a delayed process. In this poem the speaker has ended their existence on earth but have yet to reach the final step. The horses are pulling the carriage “toward Eternity” which suggests that the final step has yet to be reached. The speaker says that “Centuries” feel “Shorter than the day” implying that although an end will come, it will not come soon. Although the end is said not to come soon, it will seem like nothing to those who have passed. A grave site is compared to a house when the carriage passes a “Swelling in the ground”, because indeed the speaker will stay in this home until her final day comes. The speaker then becomes “quivering and chill” wearing her thin flimsy clothing but then realizes that the clothing has become appropriate for what is to come. The speaker indicates that the carriage is only pausing because the current state she is in is only temporary (Spence). It is said that the speaker looks death in the eye and escapes ...