This study will examine the works of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and how those works serve as cornerstones of American poetry. The study will argue that the works of the two authors stand in stark contrast to one another and serve as examples of two strains in American poetry--the contemplative (Dickinson) and the active (Whitman). At the same time, there are important similarities between the works of the two poets. Both are associated with the romantic school of poetry in their views on nature, for example, and both emphasize the significance of the individual in society, especially with respect to the self-reliance of that individual. This study will examine some of these similarities and differences in terms of the two distinct trails the poets blazed in the realm of American poetry in the middle of the nineteenth century.
With respect to the latter point, that is, the issue of nature in the works of Whitman and Dickinson, Ferlazzo writes that nature to Dickinson was something very different than it was to Whitman. Although Whitman is clearly cognizant of the role and power of death in human life and in nature, Whitman nevertheless sees nature in general as a cause for joyous celebration rather than as a force calling for contemplation of death. For Dickinson, however, nature is best known for its darker rather than its celebratory elements:
For Dickinson, when an individual became a part of nature, when he entered the "haunted house," he was going to meet his death. When another romantic poet,
. . . Walt Whitman, contemplated this merge with nature, he was not likely to be awestricken and fearful. He tended to perceive it in optimistic terms as part of the gentle and orderly process of life (Ferlazzo 102).
Thus, one finds Whitman writing with celebration and exuberance even when he writes of his own death and his relationship with nature in that regard: "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass ...