Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: Poetry of the Central Consciousness

Agnieszka Salska ‘s illuminating study of the patterns of consciousness in the poetry of two major nineteenth-century American poets borrows from Northrop Frye’s phrase the structure of the poet’s imagination. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the first extensive book comparing the two poets, builds on the shorter works by Karl Keller and Albert Gelpi and is further augmented by Salska’s outside viewpoint from her native Poland. Her extensive research in the United States in 1984 ensures the timeliness of the work and makes the study truly valuable.

That Dickinson and Whitman shared a common ground of aspiration for existential wholeness is made clearer to twentieth-century readers by Salska’s argument, which traces the poets’ heritage from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although both poets begin with the same vision-that the artist’s mind is solely responsible for the organization of the universe-their realizations of that image diverge radically.

Salska’s keen judicious observations add much to our understanding of the poets both as individuals and as contemporaries. Her book will be of great interest to students of Whitman and Dickinson, poetry and American literature. The clarity of style makes the book invaluable to undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in general.