She does not attempt to assert herself or set herself up as "Amerian Poet" the way that Whitman does. Instead she wrote her poetry without ever once doing so for fame or fortune. She meditated on her relationship to her surroundings, her understanding of beauty, her admiration for truth, her appreciation of the essence of things. "The Sailor cannot see the North, but knows the Needle can," she wrote in 1862. She considered Death and Judgment as actual realities, doorways to Eternity, rather than the ending of existence. Dickinson looked beyond the here and now, beyond the fleeting feelings of transcendental poetry, to the Infinite. Her fascination with mortality produced vivid images and verses: "Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me; / the carriage held but just ourselves / and Immortality." Because she made herself small, as Fulton Sheen suggests, she was able to see how big everything else was. By being a humble poet, she made herself into the greatest American poet.
Whitman, on the other hand, by being a "great" American poet, failed to confine himself to a single frame of reference. Instead, his vision swooped and soared over terrains, landscapes, thoughts and feelings, always falling back to earth with a thud before whirling off again. There is little stillness in Whitman's verse. Whitman could not be as great as Dickinson because he placed his faith in himself and in a spirit that he himself created. Dickinson, however, placed her faith in Christ -- not the Christ of New England Calvinism, which like Whitman's spirit was the mere fancy of a generation.
Likewise, Dickinson was not deceived by the eloquence or naturalistic faith of her period. Her religious views were tempered by a cold skepticism, which kept her grounded in reality. The conflicting dogmas of her age were a source of confusion for her, unlike Whitman who simply rejected them and asserted his own. Dickinson writes, "I don't know why it is but it does not seem to me that I shall ever cease to live on earth" (28). Perhaps for this reason, what she discovers in Eternity is never stated: rather,...
Dickinson writes in short lines, Whitman in long. Why do these choices seem appropriate for their particular subject matters. Refer to particular poems of each poet to exemplify your points and your own poems to suggest how what you learned in writing them might help you in understanding the choices of the poets. Don't forget, this is an essay and as such requires a thesis as to why the consideration
Whitman and Dickinson During the conflict and celebration period in America, different authors started to write differently than what had been written by other people. They embraced modern writing styles and broke them with traditional writing styles. Emily Dickson and Walt Whitman are among these writers. They adopted new styles of writing to express American ideas uniquely. Although both writers are regarded as modern writers, their writing styles can be
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson project, in their poetry, an individual identity that achieves its power from within, thus placing a premium on the individual self. Ironically, this premium on the individual self was very much in vogue in America at the time; from Emerson to the early pioneers of 19th century industrialism. As a result, their projections of individual power were greatly influenced by the culture in which
Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson exemplifies the Romantic Movement in American literature Romantic Movement in American Literature The Romantic Movement reached America in the 19th century. In America, Romanticism became sophisticated and distinctive as it was in Europe. American Romantics illustrated high levels of moral enthusiasm, devotion to individualism, an emphasis on intuitive point-of-view, and an assumption that the globe was naturally good; however, the reality was that corruption prevailed in
The spider is working upon a canvas, referring to it as an "Arc of White" (Dickinson 3) and the mood of the poem is that the spider is quite content to be this way. The spider is working at night and it is the only thing that can contribute to his project. The spider is grounded in his task and while it might look as though there is no
" typical way in which a poem by Dickinson is structured is by the use of the "omitted center." This means that an initial statement is followed by an apparent lack in development and continuity and the inclusion of strange and seemingly alien ideas. However, these often contradictory ideas and images work towards a sense of wholeness and integrity which is essentially open-ended in terms of its meaning. "Often the
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