Compare And Contrast Dickinson And Whitman's Poetry

Death is a factor of life everyone has to go through. No one is too busy for death, it takes everyone whether it bothers us or not. Like every poet, Dickinson and Whitman reflect their point of view in their poetry, albeit they have different ways of expressing this reflection. Both poems are characteristically different, Whitman has a more positive outlook on life and is the master of free prose. On the other hand, Dickinson has short unadorned lines that are very direct and follow the laws of poetry. Throughout Whitman’s “Oh Captain! My Captain!” and Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” both poems convey the attitudes the authors have on death, however, they differ in their style and tone. Everyone has a different
Whitman is the master of free verse and of long sprawling lines that express many emotions, “For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding” ( line 11). As compared to Dickinson who uses short concise lines to express herself “Because I could not stop for Death –” ( line 1). Whitman himself was a more outgoing person than Dickinson, who was considered a recluse and this influenced the way they write their poetry. Whitman completely disregards the laws of poetry which leaves more room to express his emotions. Dickinson was a quiet person, who preferred the company of her ideas and mind rather than the company of one hundred people, her personality led to her poems being shorter, and gives a more limited scope of expression. The length of their poems also varies, Whitman, the master long lines is obviously going to write longer poems than the poems of the introverted Dickinson. In many of his poems, Whitman uses extended metaphors to relay a message, for example, the captain in “ Oh Captain! My Captain!” is the former President Abraham Lincoln, and he speaks about winning the war and how the voyage of the ship ( The Civil War) was