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LITR 4328: American Renaissance .png){kind=small} |
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Justin Murphy
Emily Allan Whitman: How Three
Poets Vary in American Renaissance
When
discussing American Renaissance, there are three poets that you must discuss:
Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson. These three poets dominated the American
Renaissance poetry scene, and for good reason. The work that they did showed
that there are varying forms of poetry, and varying forms of American
Renaissance. While all three of them are heralded for their expertise, they
differ quite a bit in their approach to poetry. Each of them has their own
specific and distinct style.
Before proceeding, I should clarify the main differences between the
three poets. The first difference is the form that the poets use in their poems.
Edgar Allan Poe is well documented for his use of formal verse poetry. Formal
verse poetry is one that follows the typical poetry style. It uses a typical
rhyme scheme, a set stanza usage, and is often considered ‘sing-songy’. Walt
Whitman, on the other hand, utilizes free verse poetry. Free verse poetry is the
opposite of formal verse. It does away with the prototypical rhyme scheme and
stanza usage. Whitman is considered to be the father of free verse poetry. In
between the two sits Emily Dickinson. She utilizes a mix of both formal and free
verse. Dickinson is formal in her stanza usage, but doesn’t always follow the
exact same length in her stanzas. She is a variation of the formalized form of
poetry.
The second difference is the subject matter that the poets write on. Poe
is well-known for his subject matter of death and his usage of the gothic. The
dark imagery dominates Poe’s poems and often leaves the reader with a melancholy
feeling. Walt Whitman’s subjects usually include the everyday American life
setting. These poems leave the reader reflecting on their experiences in these
situations. Emily Dickinson’s poems frequently use domestic settings, or
settings where death is placed in a domestic setting. These poems leave readers
a bit perplexed. By analyzing three poems, one from each poet, we see how the
three differ in their approach.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The City in the Sea”, we can clearly see his style
straight from the first line. Death is welcomed into the city, and then death
eventually overtakes the city. From this, the city is then carried into the
city. Poe takes a deep dive into the gothic, as usual. It is shown as he writes
“No rays from the holy heaven come down” in line 12. The dark and ominous
setting around the city shows how death is overtaking. The subject of death
itself is gothic. The poem is very mysterious, which is also typical of Poe
poems and of the gothic in general. The gothic form that Poe uses is done to
bring the reader into this melancholy state of mind. The other way that we can
tell this is a Poe poem is from its form. While he doesn’t use a perfect rhyme
scheme, the scheme is still formal. The stanzas are set, and the poem is still
sing-songy. This use of a musical poem helps the reader know that Poe wrote it.
Similar to the Poe poem, by looking at Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the
Learn’d Astronomer” we can tell immediately that it is a poem from Whitman.
Whitman consistently writes about the everyday American life, and the learn’d
astronomer is the professor of a class. We are placed in a setting of a
classroom, one that most Americans have been in before. From here, we journey
into a dreamlike state. Whitman’s character is daydreaming, something that most
students have been accused of doing before. Another way to tell that Whitman
wrote this poem is by the free verse. There is no rhyme scheme, no stanza usage,
it’s almost as if Whitman is just telling us a story about how he was sleeping
away in class. This is Whitman’s intention. Who is it to tell Whitman what he
can and can’t do? Whitman uses the frame of the “When I” throughout the poem.
From this, we are able to put some sort of form to the poem.
The key component from Emily Dickinson’s poem “I heard a fly buzz when I
died” that helps us identify that it is Dickinson is the use of the dashes. The
dashes are all throughout Dickinson’s poetry, they kind of stop the line where
it is. It could represent a change of thought, of scene, or it could represent
absolutely nothing. Dickinson uses some half rhymes like eyes and dry, and she
uses the stanzas to frame her poem. The poem is obviously very gothic as its
subject matter is that of death, which is similar to Poe. However, Dickinson
doesn’t have any qualm in dropping the formal use of death. She transitions from
the fly buzzing to the visitors viewing her, then she goes back to the fly. This
transition in viewpoint of the person dying shows a domestic setting of death.
The people are around her, which is what takes her attention away from death,
but then the overwhelming presence of death takes over. Dickinson is a
mysterious poet in that she doesn’t show her intentions straight from the gate,
but rather she lets her manipulation of the formal verse dictate her poem.
Comparing the three poets is something that most people studying American
Renaissance will do to find the differences between them. However, it also shows
us that the period of American Renaissance was one that was all-encompassing. It
started off in the formal verse, ventured through formal verse, and ended in
free verse. It could be argued that through this, we see literature
transitioning from romanticism into realism. In real life, we don’t speak like
Edgar Allan Poe does, we speak more along the lines of Walt Whitman. We also
don’t speak of death like Poe does, the scene is more like the way that Emily
Dickinson displays death. However, Poe shows us the imagery that we need. All
three of these poets are important to the development of American Renaissance in
that they show us how romanticism doesn’t mean one thing.
All three of these poets are critical to the development of poetry. The
three of them are crucial to our understanding of American Renaissance and
romanticism, but they also show us how romanticism is different. Viewing them
separately helps show us how each individual is different in their approach, but
viewing them together shows us how romanticism varies and how realism plays a
part of that.
