Dickenson vs. Whitman
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two of the greatest American poets in our history. While both in the Transcendentalist period, they had very different styles, and yielded very different work. The first difference between these two poets that we can observe, are the structural differences. Whitman for one often used free verse in which he varied the length of his lines; he was the first American poet to use this form. Emily Dickinson however wrote the majority of her poems quatrains, four line stanzas, in which she uses iambic
Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are two of the greatest poets in history. Both these styles allow for a strong rhythm and an easy flow. Whitman liked the free verse technique because he believed it freed him to express himself without the restrictions of meter, whereas Dickinson often used figurative language and strange uses of punctuation to express herself. Both authors wrote about very different subjects, Whitman wrote much of his poetry on nature as opposed to Dickinson's questions of existence. This is why her poetry is so powerful, because it has such a strong use of language and emotion. Which brings us to another significant distinction between these authors, the subject of their work. Whitman was a public figure, he traveled across America taking in the scenery and the people which he absorbed and then attempted to convey in his writing. Each of these techniques allowed the authors to express themselves in their own way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**. Dickinson was almost the exact opposite, a very inclusive person, she seldom left the house or allowed others to enter. Much of this can be attributed to the atmosphere in which each lived. While he wrote of experiences and the questions in nature, she explored herself and questioned existence. In her poem I never saw a Moor "Yet certain am I of the spot As if the Checks were given", the word checks symbolizes her right of passage into heaven. Almost every aspect of their lives was different but both are linked by the lasting impressions they left on the future of American poetry.
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