Whitman, Dickinson, and the Self

Before I get into poetical analysis, let me start with my experience with poetry. Before college, I disliked poetry as a general rule, save Shakespeare and Homer. I'd read a smattering of Thoreau (another Transcendentalist) and Dickinson before, but loathed reading both. My first year of college allowed me to see past my dislike of poetry and appreciate each work for its own merits. Now I tolerate it to a large extent. Poetical analysis is still not my forte, and I won't pretend it's so. However, I did find something of note in our discussion of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson thus far.

Poetry is many things, just as theatre, prose, and speech are many things. Each person approaches poetry with a different intention and in a very exclusive frame of mind which they describe the best they can through words, punctuation, and style. Whitman and Dickinson, though both poets of the nineteenth century, have very different styles. Or do they?

When taken in contrast, Whitman and Dickinson are opposites. Whitman prefers long poems often without a definite meter or rhyme scheme with an emphasis on America and the role of the poet. Dickinson was a recluse, preferring nature and twists in the last line of a short poem with end rhyme and somewhat consistent meter. To get even more blunt, Whitman is written as a male, middle-aged New Yorker (one of his poems in Leaves of Grass puts him at age 36) while Dickinson is female and wrote from her teenaged years likely up through her death at 56 at her family home in Massachusetts.¹ Yet there's a fundamental similarity between these two that unites them in a common theme – the Self.

It's nearly impossible to divorce either of these poets from their own experiences. Whitman in Leaves of Grass often refers to other people's emotions and describes how acutely he felt the pain or joy as his own. There are exceptions, as in the line “But they are not the Me myself.” His subject is not these people, but his own experiences, his own soul, and how they affect him but do not change him. Perhaps this is too simple, too blunt. Very well. When I look at Whitman's poetry, however, I do not see fiction or fantasy or even a story – I see a man, Whitman. I see him as he sees himself.

Dickinson, too, is similar in her expression of her own experiences. Instead of seeing and empathizing with people, she focuses on nature, the concrete objects of life, and relates her emotions to the physical instead of transcending the material. Her famous poem, “I heard a fly buzz when I died,” seems a perfect example of this mix between the physical world and emotional experience since poetry is very rarely written posthumously. (You're allowed to smile here – Dickinson isn't all depressing.)

Whitman deals in portraits, snapshots, and glimpses of what he sees and internalizes what he views as a way to describe himself and others; Dickinson delves into the experiences in nature and transforms them into a metaphor for her inward emotions. The thread that ties these two together is this ability to take the outside world and relate it back to themselves. We often look at both poets with cocked heads and quizzical brows at their odd expressions, but both are releasing the thoughts in their head in the way that seemed best to them.

Going back to my beginning explanation of poetry, I still don't understand much of either poets or poetry in general. However, this brief exploration into both poets over the past weeks in this class has given me a new sense of appreciation for Whitman and Dickinson's personal brands of poetry. I think it's essential to view both through the eyes of specific people looking to understand and share their perspective on the world through words—even if the words mean nothing to any other reader—in the hope that someone would understand. I can't claim I understand either poet, but I can read with a fresh sense of common uniting themes when looking at their poetry through the view of the Self.

1All quotes and biographical information come from the Dover Thrift Editions of Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition by Walt Whitman and Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson.