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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

- Born and raised in Amherst, Ma. , a religious

Puritan Community

- Spent her whole life without much contact

with the outside world, giving her time to think about her personal life and focusing on her poetry

- Was influenced by Christianity, the 17th-century English metaphysical poets, the Puritan Church, the book of Revalations in the Bible, and more

- Wrote her poems in quatrains ( four-line stanzas). Used slant rhymes, inventive punctuation and sentence structure, figurative language, and irregular and inverted syntax to emphasize words.

Contribution to American Literature

- Dickinson often wrote about life, death, and personal experiences

-After her death, her family found 40 hidden volumes of poetry and published them (1,775 poems). Her canonical work then became popular and appreciated

- Inspired poets to take risks and begin experimenting other forms of poetry

- "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality."

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Contribution To American Literature

- Whitman was considered a revolutionary poet, composing poetry about life, death, and the common people of the American culture

- He is considered the master of free verse poetry, an organic form of poetry that gains it's structure as a result of the poem itself

- He independently published his canonical volume of poetry , "Leaves of Grass" which consisted of 12 untitled poems and a preface

- "The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executive or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, not even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people"

Common People

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

- Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Long Island

- Held many job positions such as office boy, typesetter, printer, newspaper editor, schoolteacher, carpenter, and journalist

- After reading Ralph Emerson's comments on his work, Whitman had a goal of expressing humanity and nature through spiritual language.

- Influenced by Homer, Dante, the Bible, and Shakespeare

- Wrote in long descriptive sentences

Historical Context

- In the 1800's, traditional poetry, a type of poetry with many grammatical and structural rules, was the most common type of poetry

- Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman began experimenting with a different form of poetry: organic form.

- In organic form, there are little or no grammatical and structural rules. The poem's form and structure are results of the poem itself.

- Whitman and Dickinson's works were a "bridge" between the philosophical Transcendentalism and realistic Realism

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