Summary:
Two poets whose poems have influence the poetry world greatly are Whitman and Dickinson. They are considered to be American Masters. The tones of their poetry are completely opposite, yet these two poets wrote how they felt and from the lives around them. Their lives were exact opposites, as ws their poetry; but they shared many similarities.
Poetry comes in many different forms and brings across many different messages. Not one poem is like another and the styles are very different. Just like the poems, the poets themselves are very different. They create their own style and their own ways of saying different things. It is from the poets of the past that we learn different poetry styles and how the past can influence the present and the future poems and poets to come. Two poets whose poems have influence the poetry world greatly are Whitman and Dickinson. They are considered to be American Masters. Both so very different and alike in many ways. Their lives and experiences influenced their writing, like most poets' lives did. They created their own style to writing witch help to make their poems their own. They have grown in our hearts and have been taught in schools for years and for many more years to come.
Walt Whitman was born on May 31st 1819. He grew up on a farm in West Hills, Long Island. He grew up in a large family with seven brothers and sisters. He attended school in Brooklyn. He was fortunate to experience both the country and urban city life. Although Whitman never went on to attend college he spent his time working as an office clerk and a printer's assistant. He also taught school from time to time. Whitman enjoyed spending the weekends on the beaches and in the woods of long island. He found nature relaxing and inspiring. He published his own collection of poems at his own expense in 1855. Emily Dickinson was a lively child. She enjoyed being part of a busy household and took part in season parties. Dickinson was sent to a strict school, yet that never seemed to damper her high spirit. She enjoyed the boarding school life. Then her father took her to Washington D.C and then on to Philadelphia. At that point her life turned. She retreated to her room where she would spend the rest of her life, only leaving it to do some household tasks. She then began to only dress in white. Dickinson's poems were only published after she died. Dickinson died in 1886 of kidney disease.
As you can see the lives to these two poets were very different. They grew up in two different places. Whitman enjoyed the outside. He spent a lot of his time on the beach or in the woods. He surrounded his life with people. He also published his own poems. Dickinson on the other hand kept to her self. No one knew that she wrote poems until she was dead. There were hundreds of poems tucked inside of the draws in her room. Yet one thing that Dickinson and Whitman both share is the fact that their work was turned away when it was first published. Whitman's work was said to be too bold and strange. Before Dickinson's work was published her family and friends edited them. It was not her original work that was published until years later. People had this fixed idea about how poetry should be and both Dickinson and Whitman went against that.
Whitman had this dramatic flare about him and his work. His poetry included the lyricism of the simple speech of every day life. Then his poems also had the length of an epic. His poems took up a page at a time and some times more. Dickinson's style however was just the opposite. She wrote in short stanzas and she wrote about gloomy subjects, such as her being alone. Although both poets were criticized because of their poetry at first their styles were nothing alike. Whitman's poems are hard to understand some times while Dickinson's are right to the point. A lot of what influenced Whitman's poems was the outside world and the people in it. Dickinson's work was that of the lonely alone mind.
One of Whitman's pieces of art is his poem "I Hear America Singing." It has to do with the people of American working in all the jobs that take place in every day life. They work to the same song. It is because of the work that they are doing that America was successful. It has a happy tone to it. One of Dickinson's poems is "I heard a fly buzz when I died." This poem is about death and it describes the since when some one dies. The sadness that fills the room and the tears of the loved ones. These two poems couldn't be any more different. The tones are completely opposite, happy and dark. Yet these two poems show just how different Whitman and Dickinson were. They both wrote how they felt and from the lives around them. Yet their lives were exact opposites.
Whitman and Dickinson play large roles in the history of poetry. They still influence how people write today. At the time in witch they lived their work was turned away because it wasn't to the standards of the time. It wasn't until later that their work was accepted for what it was. Whitman and Dickinson will continue to be taught in schools all round the world and they will continue to influence future poets. They are true American Masters.
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