LITR 4232: American Renaissance

Final Exam Essays 2013 assignment Sample answers for B5. Poe, Whitman, Dickinson Poetic Styles.

Stephanie Starkey

Informal to Formal and in-Between: Poe, Whitman, Dickinson

During the American Renaissance Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson contributed masterful works of poetry. Each writer developed their own poetic style that makes their works not only unique but also recognizable by the reader. Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson wrote in verses that are generally associated with most poetry but differentiated in their particular preferred style of verse. The poetry styles were formal verse and free verse but each poet had a distinct way to express their poetry.

Formal verse was a deliberate form of writing that followed a meter and had regular rhymes. It can be best associated with the rhythmic verses of songs or hymns and is easily memorized. The rhymes can have variants through half-rhymes, sight rhymes, and internal-rhymes. It is often an older type of writing that dominated past poetry writers. Free verse does not have metrical rhymes or a fixed meter but rather follows speech patterns. Free verse allows for adaption or reflection of the poet’s thoughts while making the poetry seem accidental. Poe wrote in a formal style of poetry that followed the traditional styles of poetry while Whitman wrote in a free verse that was informal and reflected his thoughts in a common way that was relatable to readers. Dickinson defied the traditional ideas about poetry but instead wrote in a way that combined both types of poetic verse. Her poetry included rhyming metrics but would switch into a free verse in the same poem while using slant rhymes or off rhymes.  The unique style makes her poetry easily recognizable to readers.

Poe’s style of poetry could also be recognized by the content of his poems. “Around the world and especially in Europe, Poe stands among the best-known, most popular and influential American authors” (Poe Style Sheet). His poetry was romantic and expressed almost all the elements of romanticism despite a lot of his writings being associated with the American gothic. Poe’s poetry tended to be dark and the gothic elements are easily recognizable through his references to settings, colors and death. In the poem “Romance” Poe’s formal verse expresses an array of romantic elements by using the gothic, loss and desire, nature and transcendentalism. The line “The blackness of the general Heaven” actually combines gothic and transcendentalism through one verse (Poe). It is the same type of romanticism combination in the poem “The City in the Sea”. The first stanza “Lo, Death has reared himself a throne” combines the gothic and transcendentalism because Death is gothic and there is the transcending idea that a throne could be elevating one’s self higher (Poe). By the way Poe expressed himself and how he perfected the formal verse style of poetry, the poems are easily recognized by readers but the way he used the elements of romanticism made his writings easily recognizable from the American Renaissance period.

Walt Whitman’s style of using informal verse in poetry contrasted the formal verse style of Poe. Whitman had a style that “faces what needs to be faced. Poetry is not an evasion or escape but a direct, highly-charged encounter” (Whitman Style Sheet). It had an honest appeal to readers because the poetry could be associated with modern subjects. The poem “There Was a Child Went Forth” expressed the way a child might view and learn about things in his environment. As the child sees what is in the environment the object “became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day” and the last stanza concludes what the child has learned because the objects “became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day” (Whitman). The poem is realistic in how it expresses the way a child learns but has the romantic element of evoking emotion through eloquent phrases. The poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” differs from “There Was a Child Went Forth” in the way it begins very factual in the first stanzas and then the romantic elements are in the last stanzas. It is still written in Whitman’s free verse but the last stanzas “In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars” is more romantic because of the transcendentalism and romanticism of looking up in the mystical night at the stars.

Emily Dickinson’s poetry also combined the elements of romanticism but cannot be described as using a particular or singular type of poetic verse. Her stanzas are lyrical but at times did not follow a regular or recognizable pattern. Dickinson’s poems also would have odd placed punctuation or have no punctuation at all and there are noticeable dashes inserted into the stanzas. “Dickinson's quirky variations on formal styles are widely thought to develop partly from her genius for experimentation but also partly from her isolation from contemporary publishing” (Dickinson Style Sheet). In the poem “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” she uses the elements associated with romanticism including gothic references that often do not appear in all her poetry. The poem starts with someone who is suppose to be dead but isn’t since implies “I felt a funeral, in my brain” (Dickinson). The poem ends with what seems to be the soul letting go of the body to die. The same type of writing is expressed in “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” because it begins with a person being conscience of death and what is currently happening in the room but then in the last stanzas “And then the windows failed-And then I could not see to see” is the same sort of letting go of the body. The windows could be a person’s eyes and not being able to see could reference the letting go of the physical body. There is realism and romanticism combined in Dickinson’s poetry along with a unique style of verse that is recognizable to the reader.

Whitman and Dickinson both had a unique style in their writing content and techniques. In comparing the two authors it seems that both wrote lyrical poetry but they used their own style of verse to express themselves. Whitman wrote about things that were more associated with realism but still held true to the elements of romanticism. Dickinson had real subject matter and wrote with romantic elements but her poems were erratic and were left open ended to be interpreted by the reader. The poets also differed in the way they took real things and put them together in the verses of a poem. Whitman’s poetry was sometimes similar to prose because it often expressed things in a way that seemed like broken up conversation while Dickinson expressed things less precisely in her poetry by switching verse styles. Both writers did however use most of the elements of romanticism like Poe. Poe was able to create poetry that used gothic, transcendentalism, the sublime, nature, loss and desire. His writing was formal and used mnemonic verses with rhyming meters that made his poetry classic literature and a work of literary art. It is the unique way that each poet used poetic styles of verse that made them recognizable to a reader and it is the use of the romantic elements that made them recognizable as great literary contributors to the American Renaissance.

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