Journal #42

There is a lot of controversy over who people prefer to read, Walt
Whitman or Emily Dickinson. Personally I would prefer to read Emily
Dickinson because she makes a lot more sense to me than Walt Whitman
does. Walt Whitman was a very complicated poet, and he made every poem
that he wrote have multiple meanings. Personally I prefer to sometimes
have poems that I can take at face value and that are very literal, so
it is a lot better for me to read Emily Dickinson. I prefer to read
some of the complicated poems every once in a while, but quite often I
prefer to read the poems that are simple and easy to follow. Walt
Whitman tried to talk about very complex things in every single poem
that he wrote, because he tried to write about Self, the every man,
God, Christianity, or America in every single poem that he ever wrote.
It may not have always been about all of those things, but almost
every time he writes about more than one of those themes. He also
writes things in a very complicated way that is quite often very hard
to follow. He is very egotistical in his poems, because he says
everything is him and about him and he is God and everyone else is God
as well, and I do not agree with that. I do not like Whitman from what
I have seen from him, and he kind of makes me mad. I much prefer Emily
Dickinson, because she is a lot more simple with what she is trying to
say. It is also easier, because even if she is trying to be complex,
she is still a lot easier to understand than Whitman ever was. Whitman
and Dickinson were not popular during their lifetimes, because many
people did not agree with them or did not have their poetry. Whitman
and Dickinson were both extremely popular poets after their deaths,
and many people continue to read them even today.