As of tomorrow, former poet laureate Robert Pinsky undertakes the duties of the Washington Post Book World Poet's Choice columnist. His inaugural column presents for consideration the claims of "our national poets [Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson], both writing about poetry." Contrasting Dickinson with Whitman, Pinsky writes:

Dickinson takes what seems to be a different view of the poet, and of how poetry works across the generations. Her image is not the voice of a swooping hawk, but a lamp, even a part of a lamp. But her terrain, like Whitman's, expands to the largest proportions and her vision too extends into the future:

The Poets light but Lamps --

Themselves -- go out --

The Wicks they stimulate --

If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns --

Each Age a Lens

Disseminating their

Circumference --

Dickinson's "vital Light," like Whitman's "good health to you nevertheless," projects itself beyond mortality. You could argue that of the two she makes the grander claim: Whitman shakes his white locks at the runaway sun, whereas Dickinson imagines a genuine poem ("If vital Light") emulating the sun, with a radiant optical precision, infinitely enlarged. Both poets, in their radically different manners, declare that the poem endures on an immense scale -- and yet lives on an intimate scale in the reader.