Comparing Emily Dickinson And Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself

“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea,” (C. Joybell C.). Prior to the nineteenth century poets had been accustomed to using “the King’s English” and writing with a romantic view, focusing more on nature and separating themselves from the cities filled with. “man’s evil”. However, during the nineteenth century two poets arose that contradicted the romantics and wrote about life as it is, a balance between romanticism and logic. Major poets that played a role in the finding of this new writing style were Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, and thanks to them the poetry people enjoy today exists, yet
What they should love, like family, independence and love, are some of the things they wrote about. Whitman loved life as seen with his references to the human body, nature, independence, and equality for everyone. In his poem, “Song of Myself”, Whitman wrote about how “for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” and about how “my tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air.” Whitman believed that everyone was connected in some way while still staying independent as seen with the description of how each atom of a person belongs to themselves and everyone else, meaning that every person regardless of sex or race posses the same atoms. At the same time, he implies that people as living beings come from the same soil and air that all life comes from. The mention of his tongue symbolizes what he would say while other body parts are used to represent different things. Dickinson also wrote about the wonders of nature, but focused more on relationships and faith as that was what she was exposed to during most of her life. Within the poem “I never saw Moor”, Dickinson remarked that “I never spoke with God/Nor visited in Heaven—”. Without seeing or finding any evidence of God’s existence, Dickinson believed in him and his kingdom. She believed in the beauty of heaven and the grandness and elegance that was there because of the nature she viewed around her. Plus, in another poem
Whitman was a gregarious man, always around people yet was able to identify himself as a single person in a sea of people as he would to others. He was not afraid to put himself out there and when he found criticism in his writing, whether it be too much information or too vulgar, he would change it. In his biography, Whitman was considered to be “a mixture of the homespun and the theatrical; he had the earthy spirit of the born democrat and the self-dramatizing deposition of the aristocratic dandy.” The fashion that Whitman lived his life was nothing less than an adventurer wanting to see America and all of its beauty. He remained humble and accommodating while still getting out his point. Dickinson, on the other hand, was more of a recluse than Whitman. During most of her life she did not leave the house nor have contact with other people, yet she wrote about the human spirit and the beauty of nature. She was so reclusive that she told her family “to destroy any poems she might leave behind” and when the man she loved, Wadsworth, moved away she “abruptly withdrew from all social life except that involving her immediate