Wood, Dickinson/Whitman

Emily Dickinson’s, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” is an interesting poem that reflects Dickinson’s typical use of dashes to stress emphasis. For the most part, Dickinson was a very reserved and quiet person, and she really kept to herself. In this poem, I think she is celebrating the fact that she is kind of a loner, and she is seeking out others who are similar to her in that way. This poem reveals Dickinson’s attitude toward people in that I think she pities those who do not keep to themselves (as she does) because people like herself are few and far between. Dickinson almost seems child-like in this poem because of the way she uses punctuation – it sounds a lot like the way a child would speak. Nature to her is brought up through the frog, and I had a difficult time connecting this imagery to anything. I think that since Dickinson lived in her mind instead of the real world had a huge effect on her poetry. I believe that her living completely separated from the real world caused her to come up with imagery that only made sense to her and leaves the rest of us puzzled while reading it.

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is based around people in nature. In each verse, there is a reference to children and/or things in nature such as the symbolic association with grass. Grass is something that connects all of us at one point or another – it grows almost everywhere and we’ve all stepped through it a time or two. It is one of the most connecting factors in people and nature. I really enjoyed this poem because it shines a more positive light on life than Dickinson ever does.