Whitman and Dickinson
Background
Emily Dickinson (1830-86,
Amherst, MA)
Almost unknown as a poet in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now recognized as one of
America's greatest poets and, in the view of some, as one of the greatest lyric poets of all time.
Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she
experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints.
The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable
limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes.
Like most writers, Emily Dickinson wrote about what she knew and about what intrigued her. A
keen observer, she used images from nature, religion, law, music, commerce, medicine, fashion,
and domestic activities to probe universal themes: the wonders of nature, the identity of the self,
death and immortality, and love.
Writing poetry may have served Dickinson as a way of releasing or escaping from pain--from the
deaths of loved ones, from her inability to resolve her doubts about God, from the terrors,
however faint, which she saw within herself, in others, and in the world outside yet nearby.
Her seclusion may have contributed to the obscurity of her poetry.
Walt Whitman
(1819-92, Camden, NJ)
Considered one of America's most influential poets, Whitman aimed to transcend
traditional epics, eschew normal aesthetic form, and reflect the nature of the American
experience and its democracy.
In 1855 he self-published the collection Leaves of Grass, now a landmark in American
literature.
A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism,
incorporating both views in his works.
As a transcendentalist, Whitman believed a in close relationship with nature.
Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the
father of free verse.
His sexuality was often discussed alongside his poetry.
He was a non-conformist, a rebel, and he believed that it was good to shake up the
“establishment” in life and in art.