Emily Dickinson &
Walt Whitman
English 11 - Mr. Powell
Two Transitional Writers
• Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman
are included in the Romantic Period
in our textbook.
• Yet they could also be placed
comfortably in the post-Civil War
era of American Realism.
• This is because they were both
involved in making the transition
between Romanticism and Realism.
“The Poet of the Inner-Soul”
• Emily Dickinson was born in 1830
and was destined to become one
of
the greatest poets of all time.
• Like many authors, Dickinson was
not known until after her death in 1886.
• She was, in fact, a very reclusive and quiet
woman who hardly ever left her home
town.
• The picture you see here is one of two
known photos of Emily.
This is a drawing of
Emily at about the age
of nine.
“The Belle of Amherst”
• Amherst, Massachusetts was a quiet
New-England town when Emily was born
there.
• Amherst is now known for the very fine
Amherst College that is located there.
• As mentioned, Emily spent nearly her
entire life in Amherst.
• She has been called the “Belle of
Amherst.” A play about her is called by
that name.
Tending Her Garden
• To passersby, Emily was most
frequently seen tending her garden
at the home she was raised in.
• Very few people knew that Emily
Dickinson was secretly writing
poetry.
• Only a few people with whom she
corresponded ever saw any of her
poems.
7 Poems
• During her lifetime, only seven
poems of Emily Dickinson’s were
published.
• These, in fact, were poems that she
had written to other people who
then had them published.
• It is not known if she even knew
that any of her poems had ever
been published.
Possible Answers to the
Mystery
• Emily’s sheltered life may have been
the result of the death of family
members and friends.
• The more likely notion is that she had
had some failures in love.
• Even though she shut herself away
from the world, it is clear that she
valued the few friends that she had.
Failures in Love
• The question of Emily’s sexual feelings has
been a subject of a lot of recent writings.
• There were at least three men in her life that
could have “broken her heart.”
• But her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, to whom
she wrote hundreds of letters, might have
also been a love interest.
• Though there is no proof of homosexuality, it
is easy to see why something like that, which
was so frowned upon in the 1800’s,could
have driven her into her private world.
The Evergreens – the home of Emily’s
brother Austin and her sister-in-law
Susan.
Another Possibility
• Emily was educated at Amherst Academy
which had started taking female students
two years before she enrolled.
• The she entered Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary.
• The founder, Mary Lyon, ranked students
of the basis of those who would receive
God’s grace, those who had some hope,
and those who had no hope at all.
• She placed Emily in the last category.
Her Own Religion
• Not having “conventional” religious
views may have also contributed to
Emily’s isolation.
• She refused to sign an oath to
dedicate her life to Jesus Christ and
she dropped out of school.
• Even so, she clearly had a belief in
God and heaven, but it was different
than the views held by her peers.
Her Church was Nature
• In a well-known poem of hers, Emily
says:
• Some keep the Sabbath going to ChurchI keep it, staying at HomeWith a Bobolink for a ChoristerAnd an Orchard, for a DomeSome keep the Sabbath in SurpliceI just wear my WingsAnd instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton-Sings.
God preaches, a noted ClergymanAnd the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at lastI'm going, all along.
The Men In Emily’s Life
• Her father, a lawyer, to whom she
was very close was probably the
model for what she looked for in
male friendship. His death was a
devastating loss.
• The first man was Benjamin Newton
who studied law under her father.
He taught her to see what was
“good and beautiful” in nature and
encouraged her to write poetry.
Man #2
• She began a friendship with Charles
Wadsworth of Philadelphia. He was
married and they corresponded regularly.
• He visited her twice.
• She called him her “dearest earthly friend.”
• In 1862, he moved to San Francisco, and
she was devastated.
• Soon afterwards, she withdrew from
Amherst society.
• Even her best friends rarely saw her unless
it was out working in her beloved garden.
Man #3
• The third man was the writer
Thomas Wentworth Higginson who
was known for encouraging younger
writers.
• She sent him a brief note with four of her
poems with the message:
• “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my
verse is alive?”
• He was fascinated and asked for more
poems.
A Meeting
• Higginson maintained a long
correspondence with Dickinson,
and eventually he went to visit her
in 1870.
• The following frame is his
description of first meeting her:
“A step, like a pattering child’s in the entry,
and in glided a little plain woman with two
smooth bands of reddish hair and a face of
no good feature—in a very plain and
exquisitely clean white pique and blue net
worsted shawl. She came to me with two
white day lilies, and she put them in a
childlike way into my hand and said, ‘these
are my introduction’ in a soft, frightened
childlike voice—and she added, under her
breath, ‘forgive me if I am frightened; I never
see strangers and hardly know what to say.’”
Higginson said that, soon
after this first moment, Emily
talked easily and
continuously. He later said “I
never was with anyone who
drained my nerve power so
much…Emily Dickinson had
more charm than anyone I
every knew.”
Emily’s Home in
Amherst,
Massachusetts
The back of the Dickinson
Homestead showing the lawn and
garden.
Her Poetry
• Emily probably wanted to have her
poems published but on her own terms,
and it seemed that publishers were
unwilling to take a risk with them—they
were very unconventional at the time.
• Higginson thought that Walt Whitman
(next) influenced her poems, but she said
that she never read his poetry because
she heard his poetry was “disgraceful.”
Her Own Style
• It seems that Emily invented her own style for
her poems.
• They have a sing-song quality and are similar, in
many ways, to the old ballads of the English and
Irish people.
• They often alternate between iambic tetrameter
and iambic trimeter.
• There is a gem-like depth of thought in her
simple lines.
• She knew what she wanted to say and was
precise in her ways of saying it.
Her “Letters to the World”
• Without a publisher, Emily kept on
writing her poetry privately.
• In one poems she calls them “my
letters to the world which never wrote
to me.”
• She tied them up in little blue ribbons
and hid them away in drawers and
boxes.
Emily’s Death in 1886
• When Emily died,
her sister Lavinia
was in charge of
Emily’s estate.
• Lavinia knew that
Emily wrote some
poems, but imagine
her surprise when
she started going
through Emily’s
stuff.
Surprise!
• At first, Lavinia went through boxes
and dressers and found about 900
poems.
• But she kept finding even more.
• Eventually the total swelled to over
1800 poems.
• Not all of them were published until
1955, nearly seventy years after her
death.
Emily’s Legacy
• Emily Dickinson is now considered
one of the greatest American poets.
• Moreover, she is America’s first
major female poet and one of the
first major female writers in all of
Western literature.
• Her “letters to the world” have
finally found their audience.
Walt Whitman
• If Emily Dickinson is one of America’s
great poets, she has to share the
spotlight with Walt Whitman.
• Whitman may have changed the course
of poetry more than any other single
person.
• Almost single handedly, he invented
free verse, the poetry of no rhythm and
rhyme that had dominated the last
century.
Whitman
•
Walt Whitman was born in 1819,
about half way between the
American Revolution and the
American Civil War.
• By 1855, when Whitman published his
first edition of poetry, America had
changed dramatically.
• Whitman is the first poet that seemed
to speak for all of the new United
States.
A Growing America
• In 1783, the new country was a group of
13 new states clustered along the
Atlantic coastline.
• By 1855, America had
grown to 30 states that
stretched across the
continent and was rapidly moving toward
industrialization and urbanization.
• It was a diverse country with people
coming in from all over the world.
Diversity
• It was America’s diversity that
fascinated Whitman.
• He saw America as the greatest
nation that ever was, and it was
great because it was a “melting pot”
of skilled, hard-working people from
everywhere in the world.
The Young Walt Whitman
• Before becoming a poet, Whitman
held a variety of jobs and lived a
kind of vagabond lifestyle.
• He was very poor as a child and
started having odd jobs as a
teenager and young man.
• He was a carpenter, a printer, a
journalist, and even was a
schoolteacher (shows how low he
was getting).
Interested in Everything
•
•
•
•
Whitman was interested in ancient Egypt.
He loved the sea-And opera.
He was fascinated by astrology and
phrenology.
• The sights and sounds of everything
around him fascinated him.
• He was interested in politics, and he
delighted in the power of words to
express one’s ideas.
The Poet
• When he turned to writing poetry, Whitman
had already lived a fuller life than many
people live in a lifetime.
• But his poetry was different—very different
• He saw poetry as organic—growing
naturally like flowers and other plants
grow.
• He invented what is now called Free Verse
—poetry that has no rhythm or rhyme.
A Little Unusual
• Until Whitman, poetry had always
had rhythm and rhyme.
• Most people who saw his poetry
found it too weird, and many would
not even consider it poetry.
• Whitman needed a boost—a way of
getting his work recognized.
Leaves of Grass
• His first book of poems was entitled
“Leaves of Grass.” (1855)
• Whitman paid for it entirely by himself
because, like Dickinson’s poems,
publishers thought they were too odd
to take a costly chance on.
• As a former printer, he saved more
money by doing the typesetting.
• He sent a free copy to Ralph Waldo
Emerson.
Support from an unusual
source
• Emerson was considered America’s
greatest thinker and was an unlikely person
to back Whitman’s new style of poetry.
• Yet Emerson was entranced by the poems
and responded with a five-page reply.
• It became the most famous piece of literary
sponsorship in American history.
• Emerson’s support then caused others to
rethink and revisit Whitman’s poems.
Emerson’s reply included the
following lines:
“I greet you at the beginning of a
great career, which yet must have
had a long foreground somewhere
for such a start.
Emerson probably didn’t care
much about knowing about
Whitman’s long foreground, but
he was right in assuming
Whitman had lived a full and
diverse life.
Free Verse
• Free verse is Whitman's expression of
the democratic concepts of a vast
diverse America
• "What we call poems." he wrote, "are
merely pictures."
• The "real poems," he insisted, "are
the men and women in all the variety
of human experience."
Leaves of Grass (again and
again and again)
• Nine times, he republished Leaves
of Grass.
• Nine times, it grew larger with the
addition of more poems.
• In many ways, as he put it, "The
United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem."
• The volumes are a tribute to the
country and to its people, especially
the common working people.
The Civil War
• In December of 1862, Whitman was
first exposed to the tragedy of The
Civil War when he traveled to
Virginia in search of his brother
George who had been wounded in
battle.
• Whitman spent several days at
camp hospitals of the Army of the
Potomac just after the particularly
bloody Battle of Fredericksburg.
• He was so moved by the scene at the
battlefield hospital that he traveled to
Washington, D.C, and spent much of
the next three years working
occasionally as an unofficial nurse in
several army hospitals.
• Whitman made a great effort to get to
know wounded soldiers, bringing
them small gifts and writing letters
for them
Abraham Lincoln
• Whitman was also a great admirer of
Lincoln.
• Lincoln's death evoked a strong response
in Whitman who wrote several poems about
Lincoln’s death.
• "O Captain, My Captain" is perhaps the best
known.
• "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloom'd," is also a well-known Lincoln
memorial.
The American Chorus
• In the following poem, “I Hear America
Singing,” Whitman envisions America
as a giant chorus.
• Each person is like a soprano, an alto,
and tenor, or a bass who is
harmonizing their voice
• Into the giant American song.
I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be,
blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or
beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or
leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter
singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in
the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at
sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother--or of the young
wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—
Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day--At night, the party of
young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious
songs.
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