The Poems of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman

Hence, in spite of their enormous personal differences as individuals in the world, Dickinson and Whitman show a distinguishable similarity in asking questions about the reputation of victuals a life of the spirit. Fin each(prenominal)y, although they arrive at their conclusions by precise different routes, these two poets agree that the life worth living is informed by the spirit.

This essay will explore several(prenominal) of Dickinson's poems and examine to what extent these share with Whitman's the rival for immersing ourselves in the "now," the concern with the nature of death and immortality, and the investigation of the verity of things beyond the immediate, signifi batht reality. In Dickinson's poems, opposing impressions work together at the marrow squash of things. Dickinson's poems, " supremacy is counted sweetest," (#67)*, "I like the look of agony," (#241), "Much monomania is the finest sense," (#435), and "Tell all the truth barely tell is slant," (#1129) all seem to focus on how opposites meet, clash, and are resolved or left in dynamic tension. Segments of Whitman's "Song of Myself," and "Crossing Brooklyn ferrying" will be compared to these poems of Dickinson in order to discover something much about the nature of ghostly inquiry and the similarities and differences in the modal value these two poets proceed. We shall see that Whitman arrives at a vision of spiritual wholeness by quite another route.

In "Success is counted sweetest," (#67) an early poem, (written as early as 1858), Dickinson is already exploring the power

In the opening lines of this poem, the poet is reflecting on the sarcasm of opposites. She says, here, that success is appreciated most by "those who don't succeed," pointing out that all things in life have their opposites, and it is by recognizing an opposing force that the thing itself comes into clear, sharp relief.

This poem is not about success, then, that about how success can best be delineate when it is held up next to its functional opposite, failure. This early lesson in the nature of the human spirit focuses on how opposition itself yields truths that otherwise office not be discernable.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,

Here, Dickinson says that "Truth" must be told fully, but circuitously, in a round-about guidance for one reason besides: if we hear it straight on, it will be too silver for us to take in. "The Truth must dazzle gradually," she says gently, "Or every man be blind " ironically superlative the possibility, here, that every man is, indeed unable to see the truth for what it is. Those who desire to know the truth and to live the truth of a deeper, spiritual life must go about it carefully, and as yet then, she suggests, we may be "blind" to what reality really holds.

Whitman's way is to assert that a larger reality exists, and that all of our questions can be answered if we turn to listen to the voices of the here and now, the voices of the spirit in all that is. In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," he says:

The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

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