A poster at Ron Silliman commented on a lecture she delivered on American 19th Century Women Poets who Weren't Emily Dickinson, which i think was the title of the lecture.

She pointed and then linked to a woman called Helen Hunt Jackson, who wrote
this which moved me deeply and has as much a fear of death as any of emilys work.

Silliman pointed out it wasnt skill or content that made e. unique but diction...(this is me), so that america has had two traditions, the barabaic yawp and epic long breaths of whitman and the small contained machines of e, though that is a dichotomy and there are exceptions, i think it might be crude enough to be useful.