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Clark
Omo
8
December 2016
The Poetry Triangle: Comparing Whitman, Poe, and Dickinson
Emily
Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Edgar Allan Poe represent American poetry in three
of its most powerful incarnations. For Whitman, it is the Transcendental free
verse that pervades his wandering words. For Poe, it is Gothic musicality that
rings in his poetic rhythms. And for Dickinson, it is combination or rejection
of any theme defined in this class. Despite the difference in styles and
subject, each of them has one thing in common; all three are American poets. And
it is through this shared bond that they each exemplify the sheer adaptability,
variety, and freedom that comes with engaging in the literary art, as well as
the talent evident in American literature. Dickinson, Whitman, and Poe may each
be on opposite points of a triangle, but they nonetheless prove the power of
American Literature through both their similarities and contrasts in themes,
style, and mechanic. But, ultimately, all three of them are an excellent and
ever-fruitful source of America’s poetic capabilities.
Perhaps the first point in which the three poets converge and simultaneously
diverge is the use of Romantic themes and narrative. As has been defined in this
class, Romantic literature, for America, especially, contains two subsets:
Gothic and Transcendental. In the case of Whitman, with the example of his poem,
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”, he explores the common Transcendental
themes of the deification of nature and the power of the self. This poem follows
the view of a person listening to a lecture from an Astronomer: “When I heard
the learn’d Astronomer\When the proofs, the figures, were ranged before me\When
I was shown the charts and the diagrams to add, divide, and measure them” (Lines
1-3). The listener is repulsed by this oversimplification of nature: “How soon,
unaccountable, I became tired and sick” (Line 5). The listener then runs outside
to the “mystical moist night-air, and from time to time\Look’d up in perfect
silence at the stars”. The listener quickly grew tired of the astronomer’s
systemization and categorization of Nature into a concrete set of terms and
measurements. As a result, he becomes “tired and sick” and thus wishes to escape
into the “mystical moist night air”. This is a common theme amongst
Transcendentalist literature, and is so in Whitman’s works: the sublime power of
man’s connection to nature and rejection of the scientifically certain. The
listener sees greater beauty in nature as an abstract, sublime, almost
untouchable entity rather than as a touchable, seeable set of numbers and rules.
Besides the Transcendental themes, the reader of the poem can see another trait
present in this poem; a peaceful beauty. The night air is moist and mystical.
There is “perfect silence” as the listener looks up at the stars. This is
another Transcendentalist theme: sublime beauty. Nature possesses this trait
inherently and absolutely, as opposed to the world of Man that renders
everything to a dull, lackluster state of grey. And the other major theme
reiterated here is the power of one’s self. The listener has made the decision
to reject scientific theory and tangible fact for the mystical night, where,
perhaps, he can find greater value and ultimate completion in his soul.
Opposed to this sublime, wonderful euphoria present in Transcendentalist poetry,
the dark, bleak, and grotesque of the Gothic rears its head in the words of
Edgar Allan Poe. In “The City in the Sea”, Gothic imagery dominates the
narrative like an engorged shadow. The first line of the poem strikes the
ghastly notes right at the heart: “Lo! Death has reared himself a throne.” Death
is an ever-present figure in Gothic literature, as well as its many descendants
in gloom and darkness and the psychologically unbalanced. And Poe uses these
themes to their utmost potency, and his readers are abundantly familiar with
this. Poe infuses this poem with such language: “No rays from the holy heaven
come down\On the long night-time of that town” (2.1-2.2). And, as the poem
continues, another of Poe’s poetic staples gains its clarity: the incarnation of
the Gothic as a psychological state. As the “The City in the Sea” continues, a
feeling of impending doom, and, therefore, imminent dementia and depression,
becomes apparent. The town feels isolated and abandoned, decrepit and forlorn:
“In a strange city lying alone\Far down within the dim West\Where the good and
the bad and worst and the best\Have gone to their eternal rest” (1.2-1.5). The
city lies alone and far off in the distant West, perhaps on the edge of the
world itself. Moreover, it is also doomed: “While from a proud tower in the
town\Death looks gigantically down”. There is a haunting presence in these
words, as well as one of impending destruction. Death is looking “gigantically”
down, implying that a massive catastrophe looms over the town. Poe’s idea of the
damaged psyche at last makes its appearance here. A lurking danger awaits to
eradicate the City in the Sea, much like an inevitable state of insanity. And
when the final note of this degrading mental state is finally played, Poe ties
it off with power: “Down, down that town shall settle hence\Hell, rising from a
thousand thrones\Shall do it reverence” (4.10-4.12). Poe brings the town’s
destruction with a dark close. While the examination on Poe’s part of human
mental stability bears resemblance to the Transcendental focus on the self, it
is hardly an introspective look at the power and impregnability of man’s mind.
Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the mind’s vulnerability and fragility.
And,
of course, on the last point of the triangle stands Emily Dickinson. As has been
mentioned thoroughly and constantly throughout this semester, the position of
Emily Dickinson amongst America’s literary pantheon, though unassailable and
unchallenged, is not one that bears a permanent label. Indeed, her themes and
narrative style seem to frustratingly maintain a place between the
Transcendental and the Gothic, as well as possessing tones redolent of Realism,
but they ultimately culminate into a tone that is very much all her own. Her
colorlessly and bluntly titled poem, “I heard a fly buzz when I died”, provides
such an example of Dickinson’s inability to maintain a strict relationship with
either any sort of Romanticism or Realism. The first line of the poem begins: “I
heard a fly buzz—when I died—“. Already the Realistic and semi-Gothic themes
rise to the surface. A fly buzzing is hardly a Romantic image; it is ubiquitous,
simple, and part of everyday life. And yet, it buzzes when someone dies. This
could be interpreted as a Gothic set of imagery, for it is dark, but it
possesses little of the heightened, Gothic beautification of Death that Poe has
a penchant for. There is no Death looking “gigantically” down in Dickinson’s
setting. The person died, and a fly was present; that is it. But the poem goes
on: “The stillness in the room\Was like the Stillness in the air”. This line
represents another of Dickinson’s themes: correspondence between the feelings of
Nature and Man, thus imbuing Nature with a spiritual aspect. In this respect her
poetry bears a relation to the Transcendentalism of Walt Whitman.
Like
Whitman in “When I Hear’d the Learn’d Astronomer”, Dickinson creates a bond
between the emotions of Man and Nature with the effect that, once this bond is
forged, Nature carries Man’s spirit to greater heights and to an ultimate state
of bliss. Such is true when the Listener in Whitman’s poem “Look’d up in perfect
silence at the stars” (8). But Dickinson’s approach to correspondence differs
from Whitman’s in a substantial way. The language of “I heard a fly buzz when I
died” lacks much of Whitman’s deification of Nature. Past this point of
correspondence, the poem goes on: “The eyes around—had wrung them dry\And
Breaths were gathering firm”. Again, there are elements of correspondence
evident in this line as well, but there is practically none of Whitman’s
glorification of the bond between Man and Nature. Dickinson has taken a more
melancholic, almost solemnly sober tone with how Nature can reflect the feelings
of the human heart. For Dickinson, Nature served as a conduit that reacted to
the feelings of the humans that inhabited it, rather than as a source of release
and transcendence as it did for Whitman. And for Dickinson, all of nature could
feel the “stillness” in that room as the fly buzzed.
Besides the contrasting themes among the three authors, there is also the
difference in poetic styles. As seen with Edgar Allan Poe, musical rhythm and
rhyme dominate his Gothic poetry. To take an example from “The City in the Sea”:
“There open fanes and gaping graves\Yawn level with the luminous waves”. This
line displays Poe’s trademark usage of formal verse, with its fixed rhyme and
meter and its alliterative flow, and achieves the musicality Poe is known for.
As a result, the fluid rhythm of the poem creates a dreamy atmosphere that
appeals to sensory pleasure. The
poem also contains the Gothic color code of red and black: “Up shadowy
long-forgotten bowers” (2.8) and “The waves have now a redder glow” (4.7).
Shadows, reminiscent of the color black, and intense red color the Gothic
imagery. And, of course, “long forgotten bowers” relates to the theme of
ancient, derelict structures characteristic of Gothic literature.
In
contrast to Poe’s Gothic themes and use of formal verse, Walt Whitman shows his
Transcendentalist ideas through the use of free verse. Again, an example is
given through “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”: “When the proofs, the
figures, were ranged in columns before me\When I was shown the charts and
diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them”. This is hardly musical. Whitman’s
free verse gives the impression of common speech rather than rhythmic poetry.
Yet, it is still poetic. Whitman’s choice of words, such as “ranged” and
“columns” carries a disembodying effect that separates the reader from the here
and now. It feels as though Whitman has distanced the narrator, the Listener, in
this case, from the mathematical proofs he is observing, and therefore the
tangible, unquestionable reality. The free verse carries this affect, for,
rather than following a fixed and structured set of rhythms such as Poe, it
allows the reader to be transported to the realm of infinity since the free
verse can go in any direction it pleases.
And
there is the more objective characteristics of Whitman’s style present as well.
The two lines chosen above present the anaphora typical of Whitman’s verse, for
they both use the word “When” to open them. There is Whitman’s use of elision
seen in lines 1 and 8 with the words “learn’d” and “Look’d”. And the use of
catalog is also present in the poem, as seen with the listing of “charts and
diagrams”. Whitman’s poetry, though not nearly as musical as Poe’s, gains other
heights by being nearly entirely unstructured. It allows the reader’s mind and
eye to move with the words in any direction, while Poe’s formality moves the
mind at a set pace toward a specific destination. An interesting point of note
about this poem is that it seemed succinct and clear voiced concerning its
message. How the Listener suddenly leaves the room after hearing the
Astronomer’s labelling and categorize Nature clearly supports a major theme of
Transcendentalism. It was surprising to see Whitman be so uncharacteristically
straightforward. However, the use, or sometimes disuse, of these mechanics does
not in any way impair the power of poetry, and Emily Dickinson exemplifies this
truth the best.
Emily
Dickinson is perhaps the hardest of the three poets to nail down. Her works
constantly inhabit a state of flux between the Romantic and Realistic genres, as
previously explored. Not only that, but her style also reflects this sometimes
frustrating ambiguity. To take an example from “I heard a fly buzz when I died”:
“The eyes around—had wrung them dry\And Breaths were gathering firm\For that
last onset—when the King\Be witnessed—in the Room” (5-8). There is a rhythm
here, though it lacks the fixed rhyme and rhythm of Poe. It is like free verse
of Whitman, for it contains the same openness and freedom evident in Whitman
with its similarity to common speech. But, with the presence of a rhythm, it is
not Whitman in the strictest sense. Furthermore, this a four-line stanza or
quatrain that is an arrangement characteristic of Dickinson. There is also some
opportunistic rhyme here as well, such as “eyes” connecting to “dry” in line 5.
Dashes are here too, which, curiously, takes the place of most the punctuation.
There is a paradoxical combination of eyes wringing something dry. And
synesthesia is present in line 6 with “Breaths were gathering firm”. God seems
to be personified with the mentioning of the “King” in line 7. And there is a
shift of metaphor in the opening lines: “I heard a fly buzz--when I died\The
Stillness in the room”. The point of view shifts from the fly to the room, which
is a very unsettling effect that Dickinson is a master at exploiting. However,
for the rest of the poem, this shift does not feel as jarring. For the most
part, the poem stays within the Room wherever the speaker is, though it shifts
from perspective to perspective within the same space. Overall, Dickinson’s
poetry is difficult to categorize. Though it has Gothic elements like Poe, it is
not Gothic. Though it has a Transcendentalist link with its semi-free verse, it
is not as free as Whitman. Dickinson seems to have chosen a path between the two
that takes what it wants from the Romantic and the Realistic.
In
studying these three authors, I have gained an incredible amount of insight into
the mechanics and potential of the poetry medium. By examining these three
points, the styles of Whitman, Poe, and Dickinson, I understand how the workings
of Realism and Romanticism are used and manipulated. Poe took the themes of the
Gothic and transmitted them into a musical, haunting melody in his poetry.
Whitman took the Transcendentalist imagery and combined them with free verse to
lift the reader into the transcendent force of nature. And Dickinson played with
the conventions in startling and creative ways, making her a standout amongst
the other two and the pantheon of American Literature overall. Another thing to
be gained by comparing these three great poets was a deeper look into the
conventions of poetry itself. I learned how just a few words, with rhyme or no
rhyme, can create a message and atmosphere that lures the reader along, even if
at first glance the poem seems to make no sense. Another thing to be learned by
studying the works of Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson, it was nothing is set in
stone. The art of poetry is immensely flexible in the range of themes and
devices it can entail. Whether following the conventions of the Gothic,
Transcendentalism, or the Realistic, all three artist proved to me that poetry
is immortal in regards to its versatility.
All
three of these poets presented themselves exactly how I expected them to in this
class. Poe’s rhythm and rhyme sing true in his Gothic verse, and his conventions
only cement that atmosphere even more. Whitman’s use of free verse mixed with
Transcendentalist themes frees the reader from the reality. And Dickinson’s
manipulation of the two, along with an inclusion of her own style, proves her
unrestrainable degree of talent. All three of these poets earned their place in
American Literature well. And, despite how some of them have been classified
within their respective genres, the fact that they are still studied only
further evinces how they will always have something to tell for the ages to
come.
