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Diane Oneydy Alonzo
The MVPs of Poetry
The
names Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are staples of American
literature. Anyone who has studied poetry in American schools has had
experiences with all of these literary geniuses. Although their poetry is vastly
different, they were all writers from the same era, the American Renaissance.
When
I think of Poe, I think of dark, macabre poetry that excites the mind with ideas
of mystery and lust. With Dickinson, I envision a ghostly transient experience
in which you think you might understand, but abruptly find yourself lost in an
abyss of confusion and beauty of the sublime. When reading Whitman, I think of
the old country life of the working-class America that once was. These three
writers had very distinct characteristics in their style and subjects matter.
They took the themes of romanticism and realism, brewed them with their own life
experiences, and created the famous poems we all love, but may have difficulty
understanding. When I learned of how they lived and events that took place in
their lives, I caught a glimpse into the foundation of their poetry.
When
I read City in the Sea, I could
automatically identify that this was Poe’s work. The poem is an ominous allusion
of a purgatory-like city swallowed up by the sea of hell. The ideal
characteristics of Poe’s iconic poetry is revealed from stanza to stanza. His
ballad-like formal verse, that makes his poetry musical, is seen by his use of
fixed meter and rhyme. His rhyme, although not a sequential rhyme scheme is
still obvious. The ending of almost every line in the poem has a rhyme. Another
ideal characteristic identifiable to Poe is his use of the European gothic style
of romanticism. He writes about towers, shrines and thrones and uses phrases
like, “sculptured ivy and stone flowers,” something we would not see in
American, or wilderness gothic. Other phrases like, “strange city lying alone”,
“resemble nothing that is ours” and descriptions like “melancholy waters” and
“no earthly moans” give other gothic tones of loneliness and despair. Excess is
another key to knowing that this is a poem by Poe. Exaggerating phrases like,
“gaping graves” and “Babylon-like walls” show Poe’s use of superlatives to
emphasize the grand scale of his images. Poe also uses the classic gothic colors
red and violet to give the reader more macabre imagery.
Similar to Poe, Dickinson brings the reader into a world of death and madness.
In I heard a fly buzz, when I died,
we can see similar gothic tones like in
City in the Sea. Like in Poe’s poem, Dickinson’s poem also begins with
death. I could also automatically identify it was Dickinson’s poem by the
quatrain and the amount of dashes she uses. Her poem, although more formal than
not, is not as formal as Poe’s. She has organization in her stanzas, but she
uses slant rhymes more than true rhyme. Examples are the way she rhymes “Room”
with both “Storm” and “firm.” She does use true rhyme in the end with “me” and
“see,” which is common in her poetry as well. Another style of Dickinson is her
use of color. She gives colors a sense, or synesthesia. “With
Blue—uncertain—stumbling Buzz—,” she personifies color.
In Poe’s poem, the setting is a mystical place, but Dickinson places her
poem in a domestic setting. The poem is a deathbed scene. She writes, “I willed
my Keepsakes—Signed away / What portion of me be
Assignable—.” The person has written a will, something that is
universally meaningful. Then a fly appears. This is when the domestic setting
transcends into a mystical dimension: “Between the light—and me—/and then the
windows failed—and then/ I could not see to see—.” She dies and we were left
with the feeling of unanswered questions. This is what makes Dickinson so
intriguing. Each time you read her poems, it becomes something it was not
before.
Whitman, unlike Dickinson, can be analyzed easier. As a free-verse writer, his
poetry is written in everyday language. In the poem titled,
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,
we can identify it as a Whitman poem. By removing the silent vowel, he forces
you to read his poem in normal instead of metrical speech. No rhythm or rhyme,
but the rawness of his poetry is what makes him America’s greatest poet. Like
Dickinson, he places the reader in a familiar setting. In this poem, we are in
an Astronomy classroom. As in many of his other poems, catalogs or lists of
common items is his way of depicting realism. By giving attention to detail, he
is putting you in the classroom with him. We can also see that Whitman was
knowledgeable in what he wrote. Only a person that experienced being in an
Astronomy classroom can tell you that there are proofs, figures, charts,
diagrams and math within the lesson. Whitman is well-known for realism, but
there is also glimmers of romanticism in this poem. Daydreaming is not something
adults are able to do often. He changes his persona to child-like, bringing in
images of the sublime. “Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, /
In the mystical moist night air, from time to time, / Look’d up in perfect
silence at the stars.” He transcended the reader into the space, alone in
solace.
In
Poe, Dickinson and Whitman, we can see how the era of the American Renaissance
created some of the best writers of all time. Through these literary geniuses,
we traveled to places we know, to realms we could never imagine. Austin Green
said it best in his essay Perfect
Strangers, “Individually, we can learn a great
deal from each poet, but when placed together it shows how wide the spectrum of
poetry had become during the American Renaissance.” With their poems,
anyone can learn that with education and life experiences, one can create worlds
through literature that can create legends.
