Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

1. Transcendentalist Poetry Walt Whitman &Emily Dickinson

2. Walt & Emily: A Comparison Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson • Transcendental; Romantic • Themes: • America, Democracy, Common Man • Brotherhood • Social Change • Death • Love • Nature • Puritan; Transcendental • Themes: • Loneliness, possibility of happiness • Spirituality • Loss • Death • Love • Nature

3. Emily Dickinson: A Style Glossary • Enjambment--the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. • The Sexton keeps the Key to – Putting up – Our Life – His Porcelain – Like a Cup – • Inversion--reversal of the usual or natural order of words • slow I walk • Quatrain—poetic stanza containing four lines • Slant Rhyme—words at the end of lines that ‘almost’ rhyme • Chill/tulle • Society/majority • Gate/mat • Metaphor (Extended)—comparison carried throughout an entire poem • A locomotive presented as a horse

4. Walt Whitman: A Style Glossary • Cataloging—the ‘piling up,’ the listing of details (usually in order to show some unity, commonality) • a Yankee bound, a Kentuckian walking, a Hoosier, a Badger, a Buckeye • no chair, no church, no philosophy • Free Verse—poetry that has no set rhythm or rhyme scheme. Whitman used this to mimic everyday speech • These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me • Parallel Structure—the repetition of like grammatical structure • Mind not the timid; mind not the weeper; mind not the old man • So strong you drums thump; so loud you bugles blow

5. Ezra Pound on Walt Whitman • “[Whitman] is America. His crudity is an exceedingly great stench, but it is America. He is the hollow place in the rock that echoes with the time. He does ‘chant the crucial stage’ and he is the ‘voice triumphant.’ He is disgusting. He is an exceedingly nauseating pill, but he accomplishes his mission.”