Whitman, Dickinson and Spiders

Check out these metaphysical musings on poems about spiders by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson - Spiders, the Web and Whitman & Dickinson - sponsored by The Classroom Electric, "a constellation of web sites on Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and nineteenth-century American culture." Access various editions of Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Emily Dickinson's complete archive and The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime.

Essay: Compare and contrast a poem by either Whitman or Dickinson to a poem by a contemporary poet on the same or similar subject (but not spiders). Discuss each poet's use of language, figurative devices, and the overall experience created by each poem. Cite specific lines to explain each poem's dominant idea or theme and how it is accomplished. Include copies of each poem. Due Tuesday, April 20 - 350-500 words typed.