· Form: Expansive, free-flowing, long-line free verse. His catalogs and accumulations mimic the inclusive, democratic sweep of his vision.
· Tone: Often celebratory, absorptive, and transcendental. He treats death as a natural, necessary part of the cyclical "process" of life and the cosmos.
· Perspective: Outward and unifying. Death is not an end but a transformation, a merging with the larger whole ("the grass is itself a child...the produced babe of the vegetation"). Mourning in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a public, collective act that ultimately reconciles with death as a "dark mother" and "strong deliveress."
Dickinson’s Style & Handling of Themes:
· Form: Compressed, dense, and meticulously structured with dashes, slant rhyme, and compact meters (often ballad or hymn form). This creates a sense of intense concentration and fractured immediacy.
· Tone: Ironic, interrogative, and psychologically acute. Death is an intimate, mysterious, and often starkly physical event ("I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –").
· Perspective: Inward and particular. She focuses on the moment of death, the cold corpse, the quiet of the grave, or the fraught psychology of the mourner. Her poems are often dramatic monologues from beyond the grave or keen observations of loss, exploring it as an ultimate, irreversible boundary—though sometimes one leading to a speculative eternity.
In essence:
Whitman absorbs death into a vast, cosmic life process, using an expansive style to soothe and unite.
Dickinson dissects death as an intimate, unfathomable event, using a compressed style to probe its mystery and finality. He seeks to conquer the fear of death by merging with it; she stares at its particularity, capturing its terror, irony, and quietude.
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