Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson have often been contrasted in literary criticism. Both poets are credited with an expansive body of work that is both ambitious and provocative. Dickinson has been characterized as the aristocracy to Whitman's democracy, the seclusion to his crowd, her doubt opposite his certainty. (Sherman3) Dickinson may be more complicated and aware of the deception of many hopes. She discovers many planes between self and nature. She pushed to a greater distance than Whitman does into the subjective sphere of self-doubt and of chaos. (Keller8) She wrote her poetry fo…
