Whitman and Dickinson Poetry

ESSAY: Compare and contrast the style of Whitman and Dickinson, using examples from the following poems to support your statement.
The poems have been omitted

During the period in American History known as Conflict and Celebration, there were several poets who began to write differently than people had written before. Their writing style was more modern; they broke with traditional styles. Among these poets were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. They used these new writing styles to express uniquely American ideas. Although both Whitman and dickinson are considered modern writers, their writings can be compared and contrasted in many ways.

There are by far more differences in the writing styles of Whitman and Dickinson than there are similarities. One difference is the way they structured their poems. Basically, the structures of Whitman's poem is the lack of any structure. Whitman's poems tend to run on and on; there was no set length for his poems, stanzas, or even lines. Dickinson, on the other hand, wrote poems with a definite structure. She wrote ballad stanzas, which were four line stanzas alternating in iambic tetrameter and trimeter. So the structure of their poems is very different.

Another difference between their poetry is the use of rhyme. As with structure, Whitman's poetry has no rhyme. In this way Whitman also breaks from tradition. Dickinson's poems, unlike Whitman's, made use of slant rhyme. This is the use of near or approximate rhymes, and is a relatively modern idea. So this is yet another way in which they differ in style.

One similarity, on the other hand, is their use of modern ideas and concepts in their poetry. One of the poetic "tools" which Whitman used is cataloguing, or enumeration. This was simply making a list of things in his poetry. An example of this can be found in "Song of Myself" where Whitman lists all the people that he is, such as "A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thought fullest, A novice beginning . . . a farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor . . .". One of Dickinson's modern "tools" was her use of startling imagery. An example of this can be found in "Because I could not stop for Death," in which she personifies death as a courteous carriage driver. Though standing alone these two -- enumeration and startling imagery -- are quite different, they both fall into the same modern category of poetry.

Whitman and Dickinson's poetic styles had many differences yet shared some similarities. One used no structure while the other wrote in ballad stanzas. Whitman used no rhyme; Dickinson used slant rhyme. They both used modern but different concepts in their poems such as enumeration and startling imagery. With similar differences and dissimilar similarities, both contributed to the American literature of the late middle 1800s.

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