EMILY DICKINSONAND

WALT WHITMAN

THE BRIDGE POETS – ROMANTICS & REALISTS

The Introvert and

The Extrovert

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Wrote 1,175 poems and only 7 published before her death

Very reclusive and dressed only in white

few people outside of her family knew of her poetic genius

Her poems were published by her family after her death

Dickinson’s Style

Unique capitalizationUnconventional

punctuation – dashesConcise word choiceShortness of lines and

stanzaUnconventional rhymes

slant rhyme: final sounds are similar, not identical (ex. glove/prove, add/read, up/step)

Untitled poemsLots of figurative

language and imageryThemes

death/afterlife, madness/suffering Nature love (often unrequited)

Paired images Light/dark, mind/body,

bee/flower, life/death

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Widely recognized as one of the greatest and most influential US poets

Opposed slaveryBroke every poetic

tradition of rhyme and meter

Celebrated America and the common man

Leaves of Grass – life work

Whitman’s Style (the way he uses language)

Free verse – poetry that has irregular rhyme and meterCadence – the rising and falling rhythm of speechUse of catalogs or long lists (usually as similes or

metaphors)ImageryParallelism – repetition of phrases or sentences with

similar structures or meanings Repetition (also called “Anaphora”)Sound devices:

Alliteration - repeated use of consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase (ex. Few flocked to the fight.)

Assonance - repetition of vowel sounds (ex. purple curtain) Consonance - repetition of two or more consonants in the middle or

at the end of a word. (ex. All mammals named Sam are clammy.) Onomatopoeia – imitation of sounds (ex. bang, boom, crack, meow)