compare/contrast dickinson and whitman?

Question

i need to write an essay comparing and contrasting walt whitmans poems to dickinson's.. any thought?

Answer 1

walt whitman wrote for the public with a consioussness of his audience...dickinson wrote for herself and never intended her works to be public...whitman is verbose and grand in his language...dickinson is precise and consise with her language

Answer 2

The Whitman/Dickinson divide is the foundation of American verse. Whitman wrong long-lined poems of praise and politics. One can detect his desire to reach out to his fellow country men in order to invite change or keep a sacred thing from being tarnished.

Dickinson was recluse who spent most of her life on one piece of land, smoking cigars, and writing about herself. She turns poetry inward and writes for and to no one except herself. When she does address things other than herself, they are generally larger concepts like "Death" in the poem that begins "Because I could not stop for death, / He kindly stopped for me." She didn't even like sharing her poems. In fact, she didn't even give her poems titles since she had little intention of becoming a public poet like Whitman.

Answer 3

they both emphasize sexuality, whitman celebrates the body. In Preface to Leaves of Grass, Songs of Myself, he discusses the facts of life like death, crime, disease, etc. and in a lot of Dickinson's poems she has the motiff that it may be sad, but at least it is true. So death may be gross and horrible, but it is real, not fake.