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Walt Whitman &Emily Dickinson

Transcendentalist Poetry

+Walt & Emily: A Comparison

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

Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson

+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

+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

+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.”