Poetic Structure of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson - Essay Example

Essay, Literature 21 October Emphasis Poetry This paper discusses two poets, ly Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. They were great poets, who had a unique style of writing. They began their writing during a period in American History which was known as Conflict and Celebration. During this time, several poets had begun writing differently than other poets had written before. Their writing style was considered to be modern and they broke all traditional styles of writing. Among these poets were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Their writings differ and are common in many ways. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are known to be the originators of contemporary American poetry (Nelson 21). Both pioneered their own unique styles of writing. They were poets from the same time period and were extremely different from each other. Whitman’s and Dickinson’s poetic structure lies outside of the convectional genres. Walt Whitman changed the language and form and re-designed how a self and person could be depicted, while Emily Dickinson re-conceived on how subjectivity might be evoked, explored, and expanded (Axelrod, Roman and ‎Travisano 380). Whitman and Dickinson’s poems were very different. The difference was on the things they were interested in. Whitman wrote about the Civil War, while Dickinson wrote about death and nature. They had a few similarities, but they were vastly different people. Whitman, on the one hand, was a politically involved citizen who wrote poems that embraced the United States in an attempt to strengthen one Union on the other, while Dickinson was a non-voting woman who wrote poems that broke from society and declared her own self-sufficiency. The use of punctuation is drastically different among the two poets. Whitman used traditional punctuation in his poetry. For example, «Beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow!. Whitman’s style also has numerous misspellings. According to Petersons Publishing, “Whitman’s poetry is marked by frequent intentional misspellings and grammatical errors designed to further intensify the powerful emotion expressed in his works” (n.p.). Dickinson on the other hand, used a punctuation which was unique to her poetry as well as capitalization. According to Peterson’s Publishing, “her deliberate use of grammar, notably through punctuations such as dashes and commas, resulted in a poetic form filled with vivid imagery and intense emotion that allowed for clear, distinct communication between Dickinson and her readers” (n.p.). Dickinson used irregular capitalization to emphasize certain words. For example, in the poem she capitalized the words, World, Me, News, Nature, Majesty, Message, Hands, Her, and Sweet. She used capitalization to emphasize on the importance of things. Introversion and extraversion is another difference between the two poets. Emily Dickinson’s voice in her poems is quiet, sometimes humble like in her poem I’m nobody, while Walt Whitman’s poems are loud, big and most often, boastful. His works are very broad, identifying, and prolonged and he’s best described as talkative or expansive. His poems are lengthy and ongoing as each line and word seems to be drawing a picture. In his poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, his writings show what the reader wants to see and feel, not just painting a picture for the reader. Dickinson’s poems give out so much thought and meaning in a few words (Priddy 46). Although she does not paint such a picture for the reader in her writing, in her poems, she leaves the reader to paint the picture for himself. Her poem gives a lot of meaning. Whitman’s poems are titled but amorphous, because of the lyrics that are assigned with a successive editions and his reinvention. In the case of Dickinson’s the poems are fascicle in structure but are not alternatives (Cameron 60). In Whitmans poems he used free verses, and syllable-stress that were marked by a break. In his poems he didnt consider counting the syllables stresses, or feet, in the long lines of poetry (Walton 84). On the other hand Whitman used comparison, which was regarded as the use of repetition at the beginning of back to back verses, and the repetition of grammatical units Dickinson’s poem are line length, and structured, unlike Whitman’s poems have unconventional traits and include punctuations (Miller 73). Whitmans poems are continuous they run on and on; his poems don’t have any stated length, stanzas, or even lines. Whitman’s brought about a notion of free verses, this style is unique, his courage to deal with taboos as a subject, of sex, human body, religion and other numerous, brought changes on how people viewed the American publics of poetry, while Dickinson’s tells about the feeling of violence on the inner and outer side (Smith103). By using free verse poetry, Whitman was able to create a boundary and structure of traditional poetry made up of rhythm and cadence, which allowed different people to use poetry as a form of style. Dickinson’s poems are simple and short while Whitman’s are complex and long. Dickinson’s works are unique, unusual grammar, and simplicity of language. Her lines end all of a sudden, innocuous words are always capitalized and she tends to write on hymnals. Whitman’s poem show a lot of inclusiveness emotions while Dickinson’s poems show exclusive emotions (Cameron 60). Dickinson’s poems are more exclusive and equally exaggerated but Whitman’s poems are fiction and non-exclusive. Emily Dickinson poems reflected a dark and serious person, whereas Walt Whitman reflected an ease person and seemed comfortable in his own skin. Dickinson wrote poems with a definite structure. She used ballad stanzas, which composed of four line stanzas alternating in iambic tetrameter and trimester. Another difference in their poetry was the use of rhyme. As with structure, Whitmans poetry has no rhyme (Schmidgall 100). Whitman also broke from tradition. While Dickinsons poems, made use of slant rhyme. The two poet’s poems are different in redeterminations of their boundaries. Dickinson’s poems redeterminations are impossible partializations of self, which makes something visible like an identity. Whitman’s redeterminations are impossible totalization of self his poems also show some form of identity (Cameron 61). Dickinson’s works address cultural forces, the cultural concerns have been complicated by privacy. Whitman imagined his poems he carried his poems everywhere he went, while Dickinson’s poems were alive and she sealed them and hid them in her house. Whitman was a poet of big volumes while she was a poet of confinement, they imagination appreciates life then and there (Smith 103). Walt Whitman was a 20th-century innovator of poetry; this was because he used no metrical poetry. Whitman got her techniques of writing poetry from biblical verses (McDowell 227). He used comparison like in the Psalms. Comparison can be used as phrases, clauses, or sentences that are alike or correlative in structure and meaning. He often used rhythmic sequences, but his lines couldn’t be measured by the graphic method of marking syllables and feet. Dickinson earlier poems were conventional in ideas and in form. She used different forms in her poetry, this forms were twisted and different because of their complexity and metrical beat. She used this style to fit her thought and also started the wide use of off-rhyme. Emily Dickinson did not address her writing to audience, but Walt Whitman wrote for an audience most on National events and functions. In conclusion Whitman and Dickinson are great poets despite their different approach on their writings. Their writing style was more modern and they broke with traditional styles. Some of the differences in their writing are; Whitman wrote about the Civil War, while Dickinson wrote about death and nature. He used a big amount of dashes on the other hand she used a form of punctuation unique to her poetry as well as capitalization. Dickinson poems were introversion while Whitman poems were extraversion. Finally, Dickinson’s poem are line length, and structured, unlike Whitmans poems were continuous; there was no agreed length for his poems, stanzas, or even lines Works Cited Axelrod, Steven Gould, ‎Camille Roman and ‎Thomas J. Travisano. The New Anthology of American Poetry: Traditions and Revolutions, Beginnings to 1900. New Jersey: The state University of New Jersey, 2003. Print. Essay UK. Dickinson vs Whitman. Purdue U . 2013 :< http://www.essay.uk.com/coursework/dickinson-vs-whitman.php#ixzz3GsCWNca6> 21October 2014 Cameron, Sharon .Choosing Not Choosing. London: The University of Chicago, 1992. Print. McDowell, Robert .Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily rituals. New York: Free Press, 2008.Print. Miller, Cristanne. Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012. Print. Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory 1910-1945. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Print. Petersons Publishing. Master the Humanities CLEP Test: Part IV of VI. New Jersey: Peterson’s Publishing, 2011. Print. Priddy, Anna. Blooms How to Write about Emily Dickinson. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. Print. Schmidgall, Gary. Containing Multitudes: Walt Whitman and the British Literary Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press,2014. Print. Smith, Dave .Hunting Men: Reflections on a Life in American Poetry. Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Print.Bottom of Form Walton, Tina. Virginia SOL: EOC English: Reading, Literature, and Research. New York: Princeton Review Publishing, L.L.C, 2005. Print. Read More