Whitman and Poe

There has been a lot of discussion about the similarities and differences between Whitman and Emerson, and rightly so. They had a real life relationship, and Whitman viewed Emerson as something of a mentor figure. However after reading a few of Whitman's other poems, I have found some striking similarities between him and Poe.

Especially in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and "The Wound Dresser" - Whitman shows a similarity to Poe, writing about death, dying, and blood and gore, which are all results of the side of  human nature that Emerson avoids talking about. 

I was particularly struck by this similarity when reading this stanza of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking":

"O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me" (ln 154-161).

In the poem Whitman is using two songbirds who are "lovers" to personify the sting of love lost. What struck me about this stanza in particular is the use of "Nevermore" and the way it reminded me of "The Raven". In the poem, Poe similarly uses a raven quoting "Nevermore" to stir the narrator's despair at never regaining his lost love. The parallels to Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" are uncanny, as the songbird is mourning the loss of his songbird lover - and whose cries project the narrator's sentiment that "Never more [will] the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me."

Was this intentional of Whitman? Was he mirroring Poe? Or was it just a coincidence? It is intriguing that a poem of Whitman's, who was a student of Emerson, would strike such parallels with "The Raven" by Poe, who is essentially the antithesis of Emerson. It would be interesting to research the relationships between these three authors and how they influenced (or did not influence) each other's writing.