Walt Whitman And Emily Dickinson Essay

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Although they had unique and different writing styles, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson revolutionized American poetry through their controversial ideals and the perseverance both had to continue writing in their time.
Walt Whitman proved his worth to society over time. He“rejected traditions of poetic scansion and elevated diction”, while using what we now call today free verse (Franklin et al. 1005). He strived to show the true potential of the individual by disregarding the normal rules of poetry, implementing his own vocabulary and writing about the true, natural beauty of objects in the world. Whitman transformed the poetry world by incorporating the idea of the “living, breathing, and sexual body” into his work (1005). Many critics believed …show more content…

With her defiance and self-assertion, Dickinson’s writing was described as “reclusive, eccentric, [and] death-obsessed”, which claimed to be very contradicting during her time (1189). Unlike Whitman’s free verse, she wrote with first-person speakers “to dramatize the various situations, moods, and perspectives” in her writing, fully gathering the concept of (1190). With her death-obsessed writing, and first-person speaking in her poetry, Dickinson set herself apart from society and the many other poets during that time, like Whitman. Dickinson enjoyed writing about the psychological and spiritual aspects of nature, similar to Whitman’s ability to bring out the beauty in everything. In contrast to Whitman’s obscene and crude sexual poetry, Dickinson also denied conventional gender roles as she describes a “loaded gun with the power to kill” (1191). Dickinson’s poetry did not immediate success, but she knew that one day her works would prove to be important to American poetry in improving the way people express their feelings. Her personal life and life at home was very different than Whitman’s as her home was a place of “infinite power” (1190). Whitman left home many times in his life, while Dickinson stayed home. Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson demonstrated immense amounts of uniqueness and originality with their poetry,

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