At first glance, you would think there would not be many: Dickinson wrote comparatively tiny poems that fiercely articulated a turbulent internal life; her intended audience, if there was one beside herself, was surely very small. Whitman's work, on the other hand, is epic in scope, expansive in theme, and all-encompassing in the audience he hoped to reach. Dickinson was all but unknown in her life; Whitman, on the other hand, courted a kind of...
At first glance, you would think there would not be many: Dickinson wrote comparatively tiny poems that fiercely articulated a turbulent internal life; her intended audience, if there was one beside herself, was surely very small. Whitman's work, on the other hand, is epic in scope, expansive in theme, and all-encompassing in the audience he hoped to reach. Dickinson was all but unknown in her life; Whitman, on the other hand, courted a kind of celebrity, styling himself the “good gray poet.” Dickinson knew about Whitman, but (as far as we know) never read him – she did not approve of his subject matter.
One of the great “what ifs” in literary history is what would have happened if these two had read each other, because for all their differences they are linked by influence, subject matter, and their formal approach to meter.
- Dickinson and Whitman both came to define a new and distinctly American poetic voice--one that was decidedly personal, and that celebrated the individual.
- Both poets deal with many of the same themes, such as the individual’s relationship to nature, death, love, or the idea of personal freedom (although their takes on these ideas can be quite different).
- Both poets embraced free verse and wrote poems that were formally unlike almost all other contemporary verse – think about Whitman’s excessive line length, or Dickinson’s penchant for eccentric punctuation or lines that seem to stop in the middle of a thought.
It’s easy (and fun) to generalize (as I am) about how these two compare. But the fun really starts when you start looking at the poems. Dickinson’s famous poem about death,
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality
(Read the whole poem here. It's quite short.)
can be contrasted with Whitman’s famous lines about death from "Song of Myself":
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
It’s easy to see the differences in poetic practice here – Dickinson is focused inward, while Whitman is addressing his reader directly; Whitman is openly optimistic, while Dickinson is pensive. But both share a confounding (and expansive) view of their own mortality – a sense that, through poetic expression, that are somehow able to get outside of their selves, and outside of mortality itself; for both, their perspective is – for lack of a better word – other-worldly. I think in the end, Dickinson would agree with Whitman’s comment about how “lucky” it is to die.
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