Rogers, Whitman + Dickinson blog

I chose to discuss and compare Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death" with Walt Whitman's short chant number nine that begins "The Big doors of the country barn stand open and ready...". To get right down to it, Whitmans' poetry is like a shout of joy where Dickinsons' is like a slow, over-punctuated thought. Her poetry is far more enigmatic then Whitmans', whose writing style is usually very clear and completely unpretentious. The two pieces are Life V. Death at their essence but they share a common theme of regeneration and renewal and Time V. Timelessness. Dickinson mentions children (the future) playing in a schoolyard and a field of grain (renewal of the harvest). Whitmans' entire chant is about working at the harvest. Dickinsons' relationship with people seems always to be that of an observer or a passerby; she is never interacting with them. In the poem it is only herself and death in the carriage; it is always only herself looking on and observing. She seems to be alone with death because she is the only one sensitive enough to recognize his presence everywhere, all the time. Whitman, on the other hand is unabashed in his abject love for humans; he embraces his relationship with his fellow man as something integral. He helps at the harvest, which shows us that he is not setting himself apart from other men, whereas Dickinson certainly sets herself up to be different and apart. Their relationship with nature is also very different. In Whitmans' chant it is easy to hear the undiluted happiness of the poet and he very clearly shows us his joy in his desperately descriptive writing style. While nature is certainly present in Dickinsons' poem, it is not the main focus and she is not "in" it as Whitman is. She merely rides past the grain fields, observes the sun and the dew: I can't picture Dickinson rolling "...head over heels...and 'tangling her hair full of wisps'. I prefer the lesson and the message Whitman is conveying because the deeper meaning is made obvious and you can simply enjoy the images conjured instead of being forced to constantly find that deeper meaning.