Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered America’s greatest poets, and often remembered together because each revolutionized the genre, though they are starkly different. A Transcendentalist, Whitman felt joined to the world and writes in an expansive style that lists people and places to which he is united. Dickinson, whose views fit better with Dark Romantics, writes shorter poems with more conventional meter and rhyme schemes. As much as they differ in forms, they differ in their opinions of death and nature. Dickinson’s poems can seem contradictory to readers, but she writes from multiple angles as shown in her poems on death. In “Because I could not stop for Death–,” she portrays death as considerate because “He kindly stopped
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Again, her poem seems contradictory, but this is a valid questioning of religion, quite similar to a question Whitman would pose. What is the value in attending church, when you have the world around you, including nature, that was made by the Creator? She notices the attractiveness of nature and what simple observation of it can offer. However, Dickinson critiques the Transcendentalists in “A Little Madness in the Spring,” writing that enjoying nature is reasonable, but the person who views “This whole Experiment of Green– / As if it were his own!” is foolish. The person takes credit for nature, but he is not the creator and not part of nature. Nature is “So preconcerted with itself– / So distant to alarms– / An Unconcern so sovereign / To Universe or me–” (“Of Bronze–”). It does not care for people or need their approval; nature is organic and will do whatever it wants, just as the fly intrudes on the solemn moment before a person dies. She understands nature is a force more powerful than humans, and she is doubtful of nature: is it kind or barbaric? “A Bird Came Down The Walk” describes a bird that “hopped sidewise to the Wall / To let a Beetle pass –” after it “bit an Angle Worm in halves / And ate the fellow, raw” to show the opposing sides of
Again, her poem seems contradictory, but this is a valid questioning of religion, quite similar to a question Whitman would pose. What is the value in attending church, when you have the world around you, including nature, that was made by the Creator? She notices the attractiveness of nature and what simple observation of it can offer. However, Dickinson critiques the Transcendentalists in “A Little Madness in the Spring,” writing that enjoying nature is reasonable, but the person who views “This whole Experiment of Green– / As if it were his own!” is foolish. The person takes credit for nature, but he is not the creator and not part of nature. Nature is “So preconcerted with itself– / So distant to alarms– / An Unconcern so sovereign / To Universe or me–” (“Of Bronze–”). It does not care for people or need their approval; nature is organic and will do whatever it wants, just as the fly intrudes on the solemn moment before a person dies. She understands nature is a force more powerful than humans, and she is doubtful of nature: is it kind or barbaric? “A Bird Came Down The Walk” describes a bird that “hopped sidewise to the Wall / To let a Beetle pass –” after it “bit an Angle Worm in halves / And ate the fellow, raw” to show the opposing sides of