Good Example Of Poetry: Compare And Contrast The Poetry Of Adrienne Rich And Walt Whitman Essay

Adrienne Rich and Walt Whiteman are considered as some of the greatest poets not only in America but the whole. Their work possesses great history and is a major inspiration to upcoming poets; almost all poets have something that they admire in their works. Their works were quite distinctive and in certain times overlooked the conventional poetic rules. In several cases, Adrienne Rich and Walt Whiteman ignored the normal poetic styles and reverted to their own methods.
There are several similarities as well as disparity in the works of the two great poets. For Adrienne, her works hewed closely to American post-war, this is indeed what inspired Walt Whitman. Both the poets had their works rooted to some experiences of a war. Works of Adrienne Rich related to the America-Vietnam war while Whitman’s works entirely talked about the American civil war. During the American civil war, Whitman visited the injured soldiers, dressed their wounds and consoled them. It is worth concluding that both the writers’ works were instigated by war.
Another similarity about the writers is that they tried to abandon the conventional poetic language and came up with their own styles. Adrienne Rich for example was seen to be using open forms in her works and at some particular time sought to include what was termed as ostensibly non poetic language into her poetic works. She received accolade as well as criticism from those who read her works. On the other hand, the works of Walt Whitman were thought to be not receiving public acclaim because he had abandoned the regular meter and poetic patterns.
However, there was a significance difference in the subjects that the two writers addressed. Adrienne mostly talked about feminist and political issues, sexuality and identity while Whitman widely addressed sex and self-representation.