ear to have taken
Dickinson as their literary mentor during what may be described
as their literary heyday (4:87), inasmuch as the imagist school
focuses on "new imaginative experiences . . . loosening of rigid
meter . . . advocacy of freedom in subject matter" (1:109), and
Dickinson's poetry may be said to fall within this description.
Unlike her contemporaries Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell, whose
poetry tends to scan quite regularly, Dickinson's meter and rhyme
scheme were neither consistent nor, always, apparent. Some critics, for this reason, have pointed to Dickinson's use of
inexact rhyme and rhythm as an indication of inferior poetry
That Dickinson may be easily classified among the chief
influences on modern poets seems plainly a defensible assertion.
Inexact rhyme and indeed no rhyme may be found in modern poetry.
Morris defends Dickinson's rhyme scheme as a conscious artistic
Contrary to the assertions of some critics, Dickinson's inexact rhymes do not arise from a sense of failure
in her poetry Typically, a shift in thyme-type within a poem from exact to inexact or vice-versa is a rhetorical device indicating a point of crisis . . . In her use of inexact rhyme in a traditionally exact form, Dickinson resembles early American poets such as Edward Taylor and modernists such as T.S. Eliot. All three poets attempt to approximate conventional forms without following them strictly. They belong to an American poetic tradition that stands between the polish of Bryant and the license of Whitman (8:247).
The form of Dickinson's poetry is typically the four-line
Stanza, typically iambic tetrameter or trimeter. This form is
typical of the ballad stanza, the nursery-rhyme stanza, and the
hymn stanza. Though the simplicity of language and expression
found in ballads, nursery rhymes, and hymns can be discerned in
Dickinson's poetry as well, the verse may be described ...