The Familiar Can Also Surprise
Kathleen Roxby -- September 23, 2010
In this era of rapid change it's easy to fall into the "new and improved" world view proposed to us as advertising's great truth: that something can be considered worthwhile only if it is novel. Kathleen Roxby rethinks two literary giants and finds there is always more to learn.
Recently I was challenged to compare and contrast the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman using only the selections presented in Norton's Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (third edition). Though I was familiar with both poets, I did learn something new.
In my mind's landscape, Whitman is a big man with a big voice striding out into the outdoors sharing, in his booming voice, his thoughts for the day. Anyone along the path is swallowed up in the sound. His poem, "The Song of Myself", is rather like the music played by a marching band exploding sound into the open air of a parade ground. Or, it is like an orchestral piece which is played only in large spaces with enough room for all the musicians and their multitude of instruments. The audience is pummeled with images, bombarded with motifs consuming all the space before, behind, above and even the ground beneath vibrates.
Dickinson's voice is directed to a smaller arena, rather like compositions of chamber music. Those musical selections which are essentially a contained sound for confined places, and intended for a smaller audience. It is primarily music for contemplation. The listener is encouraged to focus on each individual instrument which can easily be identified as there are so few. The blended ensemble sound is the puzzle to be resolved by the inner ear.
None of these comparisons came as a revelation to me. They were merely a new expression of my former opinion of the two poets. It was as I perused the topics on which the poets mused that I made my discovery. Though they were contemporaries, I had not thought the two had much in common. But time and time again, they were both expounding on the same topics.
As they were poets, how unusual is that? Not very. But it was this point that turned my mind in a new direction. From that perspective, I saw what I had not acknowledged before: both of them were confrontational poets. Each dared the reader/audience with the bare force of thought laid across the page. They made pronouncements in a blatant manner, though each in a different style. But even their styles were a challenge to their time. It was as if they both were dissatisfied with the poetic forms they had read because these formal patterns could not contain their voice. A new compositional arrangement was required.
Then each of them stepped forward to dare their audiences, and they remained stubbornly true to their vision regardless of opposition.