Dickinson+and+Poetry+Learning+Plan

Emily Dickinson wrote over 1800 poems; however, less than a dozen were published during her lifetime. Even then, her poetry was likely changed (as was not unusual during the 19th century) as publishers saw fit. After her death in 1886, Dickinson's poetry began to be published (1890 originally). In addition to the visual differences in Dickinson's writing (short lines, lack of titles, unconventional syntax), the themes generally dealt with issues not usually expressed in poetry: death and immortality. While some of Whitman's work reflects these themes (most notably his writings on Lincoln) much of his pieces are anything but the dark substance found in Dickinson's pieces. Likewise, his flowing prose-like style in his poetry stands in stark contrast to Dickinson. Emily Dickinson poetry--both content and style--stands in stark contrast with Transcendentalist/Romanticism themes and, specifically, Whitman's "voice". Enduring Understandings:            Knowledge and Skills:       Students will know:       Students will be able to:    Learning Objectives: **Dickinson****:** “Fairest Home I Ever Knew” “Such are the Inlets of the Mind” “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” “This is My Letter to the World” American Culture "This is my letter to the World" This is my letter to the world,   That never wrote to me,--    The simple news that Nature told,    With tender majesty. Her message is committed   To hands I cannot see;    For love of her, sweet countrymen,    Judge tenderly of me! Notes: "'Hope' is a thing with feathers--" "Hope" is the thing with feathers—    That perches in the soul—     And sings the tune without the words—     And never stops—at all—         And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—     And sore must be the storm—     That could abash the little Bird     That kept so many warm—         I've heard it in the chillest land—     And on the strangest Sea—     Yet, never, in Extremity,     It asked a crumb—of Me. Stanza one  o      Hope is a "thing" because it is a feeling; the thing/feeling is like a bird. Dickinson uses the standard dictionary format for a definition; first she placed the word in a general category ("thing"), and then she differentiated it from everything else in that category. For instance, the definition of a cat would run something like this: a cat is a mammal (the first part of the definition places it in a category); the rest of the definition would be "which is nocturnal, fur-bearing, hunts at night, has pointed ears, etc. (the second part of the definition differentiates the cat from other all mammals)  o       Why does the bird "perch" in the soul? How would hope "perch," and why does it perch in the soul? As you read this poem, keep in mind that the subject is hope and that the bird metaphor is only defining hope. Whatever is being said of the bird applies to hope, and the application to hope is Dickinson's point in this poem.   o       The bird "sings." Is this a good or a bad thing? The tune is "without words." Is hope a matter of words, or is it a feeling about the future, a feeling which consists both of desire and expectation? Psychologically, is it true that hope never fails us, that hope is always possible? Stanza two  o      Why is hope "sweetest" during a storm? When do we most need hope, when things are going well or when they are going badly?  o        Sore   is being used in the sense of very great or severe; //abash// means to make ashamed, embarrassed, or self-conscious. Essentially only the most extreme or impossible-to-escape storm would affect the bird/hope. If the bird is "abashed" what would happen to the individual's hope? In a storm, would being "kept warm" be a plus or a minus, an advantage or a disadvantage? Stanza three  o      What kind of place would "chillest" land be? would you want to vacation there, for instance? Yet in this coldest land, hope kept the individual warm. Is keeping the speaker warm a desirable or an undesirable act in these circumstances? Is "the strangest sea" a desirable or undesirable place to be? Would you need hope there? The bird, faithful and unabashed, follows and sings to the speaker ("I've heard it") under the worst, the most threatening of circumstances. "Success is counted sweetest" "Much Madness is divinest Sense" "My life closed twice before its close" "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" Stanza 1 Stanza 2 Stanza 3 "I Heard a Fly Buzz--when I died" "Because I could not stop for Death" “A long—long sleep” (654) “"Faith" is a fine invention” (185)
 * Unit 7--Whitman's Antithesis: Emily Dickinson **
 * Description: **
 * Anchor Texts: **
 * "This is my letter to the World"
 * "'Hope' is a thing with feathers--"
 * "Success is counted sweetest"
 * "Much Madness is divinest Sense"
 * "My life closed twice before its close"
 * "After great pain, a formal feeling comes"
 * "I Heard a Fly Buzz--when I died"
 * "Because I could not stop for Death"
 * “A long—long sleep”
 * Big Idea: **
 * Identify the characteristics of Emily Dickinson's poetry.
 * Analyze a poem by Emily Dickinson.
 * Apply a set of critical questions to a poem in order to interpret poem and find literary elements used by author. ( http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/dickpoems.html )
 * Determine meaning and theme in poetry by identifying the literary and poetic elements being used.
 * Understand the importance of when something is written versus when something is published.
 * Understand the placement and significance of Emily Dickinson within the context of American thought.
 * Compare and contrast Dickinson’s poetry with other American poets.
 * Understand Emily Dickinson’s participation and impact upon the American voice.
 * Idealism vs. bleakness
 * Major shift in American voice/viewpoint. Dickinson as symbolic of this. Obviously, she had absolutely NO impact on American letters prior to 1890s; however, she does represent the silent (but soon to be exceptionally vocal) voice of American letters.
 * Extreme contrast between the likes of Whitman's idealism and Dickinson's bleak/grim world view. Be careful of labeling Dickinson as a realist because even in its most loose definition, she is not, regardless if her viewpoint is closer to a realist than that of a Romantic. If anything, she would be closer to a Gothic writer than anything else.
 * Dickinson  wasn't the first to write in this "terrible" manner, as we do have Poe. However, stress Poe as the exception to the rule, and not the rule itself.
 * Quasi-mix of convention and non-conventional forms. Not quite a rhyme scheme, metrical pattern, etc., but certainly not quite free verse. More than anything else, when it comes to her "form", note the use of dashes, capitalization, and (as a whole) a fragmented/disjointed approach to thought through verse. She heavily uses symbolism, irony, and metaphorical language.
 * Themes are "dark" and, frequently, a direct attack on idealism/romantic ideals.
 * God is gone
 * Motif: her house is a grave “Because I could not stop for Death”—Contrasts “Castle in sky” of Bradstreet “House on high erect”—“Architect
 * Biographically trust worthy—written in private
 * Subtle
 * Death not being idyllic
 * Historical Background: Women’s Voices (Dickinson) **
 * First major American woman poet
 * Dickinson was virtually unknown during her lifetime
 * Anonymity was due in large part to the difficulties she would have experienced in trying to overcome prevailing attitudes about women’s proper place
 * Sister publishes poems
 * First reviews: negative—objecting to odd poetic style—unusual imagery, untraditional meters, inexact rhymes, and grammatical errors
 * Author Study—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) **
 * 1775 poems
 * “Publication—is the Auction/Of the Mind of Man—”
 * Asks that her poems be burned upon her death
 * Chose privacy over fame (consented to one or two publications of her poems)
 * Innovative style, verbal precision, sharp observations
 * center of her existence was her family
 * Admired father, volatile relationship with Mother until stroke
 * Father encouraged her education
 * “While she was still a student, Dickinson experienced a religious crisis. Pressured to join a church, she wrestled with doubt.”
 * Stops attending church altogether by age 20
 * “Many of her poems reflect the conflict she experienced between her own convictions and those that surrounded her.”
 * Inspired by intense sufferings of loss, loneliness, and death
 * 1862—Turning point in Dickinson’s life—friend/potential love—moves to CA—she writes 366 poems
 * Becomes a recluse slowly—maintains prolific correspondence between friends and family
 * After almost 20 years of seclusion, falls ill in 1884
 * Bright’s disease—gradual failure of the kidneys
 * Sister burns nearly all of her correspondence between family and friends—saves poems
 * First collection of her poems—4 years after her death
 * “The Victorian culture of 19th century America encouraged contemplation of death, eternity, and the “crossover” of the soul from earth to eternity. Daguerreotype impressions were often taken of the newly deceased and kept as mementos of grieving families. As her best friend died at fourteen, Emily was allowed to watch over her in her final hours—an experience that haunted her emotionally and spiritually. Dickinson’s poetry and correspondence reveal her subsequent fascination with death and dying and the fate of the soul.”
 * Selected Poems **
 * Expresses Dickinson’s hope that her readers will judge her tenderly
 * What might Nature’s “simple News” be? (line 3)
 * Beauty, hope, love, mortality, immortality
 * What might be “Hands” that the speaker cannot see? (line 6)
 * Her reader’s; a lost lover’s; God’s
 * Message of poem: she wants to share her experiences with nature and the simple truths derived from them.
 * How does Dickinson feel about Nature? (line 4 “tender Majesty”, line 7 feelings of hope)
 * She loves nature and is inspired by it
 * She prefers enjoying nature rather than spending time with people
 * Compares hope to a bird that continues to sing through the storms of life
 * Identify discuss metaphor in line 1
 * Hope is a bird—abstract quality portrayed in concrete image
 * What qualities of hope are suggested by this image?
 * Hope soars high and is lighthearted; hope is braver than it is intelligent; hope persists; hope is like music
 * Possible interpretation of the last two lines
 * Hope is selfless and purely giving; it asks nothing in return from the person who hopes
 * Dickinson  defines hope with a     [|metaphor]    , comparing it to a bird.
 * The last two lines are introduced by "Yet." What kind of connection does "yet" establish with the preceding ideas/stanzas? Does it lead you to expect similarity, contrast, an example, an irrelevancy, a joke? Even in the most critical circumstances the bird never asked for even a "crumb" in return for its support. What are the associations with "crumb"? would you be satisfied if your employer offered you "a crumb" in payment for your work? Also, is "a crumb" appropriate for a bird?
 * Conveys the idea that success is truly understood only by the defeated
 * Possible interpretations of lines 3 and 4: to fully understand the value of a drink, one must be extremely thirsty—to fully appreciate success one must have been denied it
 * A common idea in Dickinson's poems is that not having increases our appreciation or enjoyment of what we lack; the person who lacks or does not have understands whatever is lacking better than the person who possesses it. In this poem, the loser knows the meaning '"definition" of victory better than the winners. The implication is that he has "won" this knowledge by paying so high a price, with the anguish of defeat and with his death.
 * In stanza one, she repeats the //s// sound and, to a lesser degree, //n//. Why does she use this    [|alliteration]     ? i.e., are the words significant? "Sorest" is used with the older meaning of greatest, but can it also have the more common meaning? What are the associations of "nectar"--good, bad, indifferent? Does "nectar" pick up any word in the first line?
 * In stanza two, "purple" connotes royalty; the robes of kings and emperors were dyed purple. It is also the color of blood. Are these connotations appropriate to the poem? In a battle, what does a flag represent? Why is victory described in terms of taking the losing side's flag?
 * In stanza three, what words are connected by //d// sounds and by //s// sounds? Is there any reason for connecting or emphasizing these words? Dickinson is compressing language and omitting connections in the last three lines. The dying man's ears are not forbidden; rather, the sounds of triumph are forbidden to him because his side lost the battle. The triumphant sounds that he hears are not agonized, though they are clear to him; rather, he is agonized at hearing the clear sounds of triumph of the other side. They are "distant" literally in being far off and    [|metaphorically]     in not being part of his experience; defeat is the opposite of or "distant" from victory.
 * Offers paradoxical definitions of madness and sanity that counter conventional views
 * Paradox: seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless suggest an important truth
 * “Must madness is divinest Sense…Much sense—the starkest Madness”—the majority sets the standard; if someone deviates from the standard that person will be seen as mad. If one wishes to be accepted, he or she must go along with the majority.
 * Function of a dash—represents a mark of punctuation such as a period, substitutes for a verb, or is meant to convey a tone
 * According to the speaker, what are the meanings of lines 1-4?
 * To the speaker, what society regards as madness is actually good sense; conversely, what society regards as sensible is utter insanity
 * Speaker reflects on two overwhelming events that afforded some idea of heaven and a taste of hell
 * The speaker uses the metaphor of death to describe the torment two cataclysmic events inflicted. What these two events are we don't know, and I think there is little to be gained in trying to read the poem biographically; for example, is she referring to the deaths of two people? and if so, to whom? was she in love? were her feelings reciprocated?
 * What matters is that the pain of these events was so sharp that she feels as if her life ended. Despite her feeling, she is, of course, still physically alive, so that she can experience more than one loss and the pain of that loss. Obviously, "its close" at the end of line 1 refers to her literal death.
 * Dickinson  uses metaphors of vision ("see" and "unveil") for revelation. What happens after death, in immortality? She compares what might be revealed to the pain she suffered twice before.
 * The last two lines of this poem present a powerful paradox; parting is both heaven and hell. We part with those who die and--hopefully--go to heaven, which is, ironically, an eternal happiness for them; however, we who are left behind suffer the pain (hell) of their deaths (parting). Is there any comfort in this poem? What is the one thing we "know" about heaven? Is heaven, for living human beings, connected to hell? A personal note: these lines chill me every time I read them, and they stay with me afterward.
 * Depicts the numbing effect of intense grief
 * Dickinson  is an astute student of human psychology and responses; her range may be narrow, but it is profound. Dickinson brilliantly recreates the suffering we undergo after some terrible, excruciating event in our lives. The specific cause of the torment does not matter; whatever the cause, the response is the same, and, in this poem, the response is what matters.
 * She traces the numbness experienced after some terrible blow. Is numbness one way we protect ourselves against the onrush of pain and against being overwhelmed by suffering? She is discussing emotional pain, but don't we respond similarly to a physical blow with numbness before pain sets in? This psychological dynamic has another parallel, an electrical circuit breaker. Just as a dangerous surge of electricity will trip a circuit breaker and cut off the electricity, so a surge of anguish will trip our emotional "circuit breaker" temporarily, so that we don't feel the pain.
 * The experience is one that all of us will undoubtedly endure at some time or other and may be one you have already endured.
 * She uses alliteration for emphasis: //f// sounds in line 1, //s// sounds in the rest of the stanza. //H// sounds tie together "Heart" and "He." Notice the alliteration in the next stanzas; sometimes it involves only two words.
 * This poem has no speaker, no "I." The sufferer is dehumanized, perhaps until the last two lines. The sufferer is an object in line 1; the formal feeling "comes" upon or acts on her or him; the sufferer is passive, submissive. Then the sufferer is described in terms of body parts--nerves, heart, feet. The gender of the sufferer is not indicated. Is depersonalization one technique for showing emotional deadness? In my discussion of this poem, I will refer to the sufferer as "she," because of the awkwardness of constantly repeating "sufferer" or "he or she."
 * Dickinson  captures the numbness with "formal feeling," "ceremonious," "like tombs," and "Stiff Heart." The numbness is a lack of feeling; perhaps it would be more accurate to say a lack of connection with our feelings or a disconnection from emotions. Consider how much feeling or responsiveness is suggested by the word "formal," how much feeling is involved in ceremony, especially ceremony associated with "tombs" or death, and how much a "stiff" heart can feel.
 * The individual asks a question about Christ ("He"). Christ of course symbolizes agony and is the ultimate suffering human being. The question can be read in more than one way. (1) The blow was so horrific that the sufferer is confused about whether the crucifixion was hers or Christ's. (2) The agony, which the sufferer is cut off from but knows is there, is so acute that the sufferer wonders whether the agony of the crucifixion is hers or Christ's.    [|Paradoxically]    , numbness or having no feelings is itself an agony. In numbness, time becomes distorted; we lose our sense of time. We perceive no end to this state of agonized numbness. So she is unsure whether her numbness began only yesterday or centuries ago.
 * The feet (means of movement) represent going about daily routines ("ground, or air, or ought"). But we do this in a "mechanical" and a "wooden" way--further dehumanization and deadness. "Ought" may be read as meaning ""nothing," like zero; or it may stand for obligations, that is, all the things we //ought// to do. Which possibility do you prefer and why? Or, do you have yet another reading? "Regardless grown" means having lost regard or concern for things or living.
 * Finally, there is the    [|irony]     of feeling an emotion which is "quartz contentment." Obviously, "quartz contentment" is an     [|oxymoron]     . How much feeling does quartz have? To emphasize the quartz-ness of the "contentment," Dickinson adds that it is "like a stone." And how much feeling does this     [|simile]     suggest?
 * Just looking at the poem reveals how this stanza differs from the first and third stanzas. They are both four lines; this stanza is five lines. Why might Dickinson have chosen to make this stanza longer? The way to think about this question is to consider the meaning of the stanza. Is making the stanza longer, which emphasizes it and also makes it "feel" a little longer and slower when we read it, appropriate to the meaning? If this extra line does not further in any way the idea expressed in this stanza, then the device may have been a mistake.
 * The time of numbness has been shortened from the century of stanza one; its end is nearing. However, to the sufferer time hangs heavy ("lead") or drags slowly. So "hour of lead" is also an oxymoron.
 * With line 2, the full force and danger of experiencing the agony are introduced--"if outlived." The sufferer may not survive the pain. The poem closes with a    [|simile]     or comparison of the sufferer to "freezing persons." "Freezing," as opposed to "frozen," indicates action that is currently happening, that is in process or not yet completed. The sufferer has moved on to the next stage and is undergoing the freezing or releasing of the agonized feelings. Does the fact that Dickinson uses the plural "persons," rather than the singular "a person," emphasize the universal application of the process she is tracing?
 * What is the "letting go" that freezing persons face? Does this merely mean letting go of the numbness to be flooded by pain? Or does the sufferer face a more terrible possibility? Will the pain overwhelm permanently, so that identity, the life itself, are overwhelmed by it and the individual is lost in it forever, as in the phrase "if outlived"? Do the words "remembered if outlived" indicate survival because of "remembered"? To remember is to have survived. However, the hour of lead is remembered //only// "if outlived"; does this phrasing suggests that survival is not guaranteed?
 * Shows speaker looking back a the moment of death
 * Mocking tone of God—and we wait for the king
 * The death in this poem is painless, yet the vision of death it presents is horrifying, even gruesome. The appearance of an ordinary, insignificant fly at the climax of a life at first merely startles and disconcerts us. But by the end of the poem, the fly has acquired dreadful meaning. Clearly, the central image is the fly. It makes a literal appearance in three of the four stanzas and is what the speaker experiences in dying.
 * The room is silent except for the fly. The poem describes a lull between "heaves," suggesting that upheaval preceded this moment and that more upheaval will follow. It is a moment of expectation, of waiting. There is "stillness in the air," and the watchers of her dying are silent. And still the only sound is the fly's buzzing. The speaker's tone is calm, even flat; her narrative is concise and factual.
 * The people witnessing the death have exhausted their grief (their eyes are "wrung dry" of tears). Her breathing indicates that "that last onset" or death is about to happen. "Last onset" is an    [|oxymoron]     ; "onset" means a beginning, and "last" means an end. For Christians, death is the beginning of eternal life. Death brings revelation, when God or the nature of eternity becomes known. This is why "the king / Be witnessed in his power." The king may be God, Christ, or death; think about which reading you prefer and why.
 * She is ready to die; she has cut her attachments to this world (given away "my keepsakes") and anticipates death and its revelation. Are the witnesses also waiting for a revelation through her death?    [|Ironically]     the fly, not the hoped-for king of might and glory, appears. The crux of this poem lies in the way you interpret this discrepancy. Since the king is expected and the fly appears, are they to be associated? If the fly indicates the meaning of death, what is that meaning?
 * Does the fly suggest any realities of death--smell, decay? Flies do, after all, feed on carrion (dead flesh). Does this association suggest anything about the dying woman's vision of death? or the observers' vision? Is she-- are they--seeing the future as physical decay only? Does the fly's fulfilling their expectations indicate that death has no spiritual significance, that there is no eternity or immortality for us? There are other interpretations of the fly. The fly may stand for Beelzebub, who is also known as lord of the flies. Sometimes Beelzebub is used as another name for Satan; sometimes it refers to any devil; in Milton's //Paradise Lost//, Beelzebub is Satan's chief lieutenant in hell. If the King whom the observers and/or the speaker is waiting for turns out to be the devil, is there still irony? How is the meaning of the poem affected by this reading? For example, does the poem become more cheerful? What would Dickinson be saying about eternity? Can the poem support more than one of these interpretations of the fly?
 * What is the effect of the fly being the only sign of life ("buzz") at the end of the poem? To extend this question, is it significant that the only sign of vitality and aliveness in the //entire poem// is the fly?
 * For literal-minded readers, a dead narrator speaking about her death presents a problem, perhaps an unsurmountable problem. How can a dead woman be speaking? Less literal readers may face appalling possibilities. If the dead woman can still speak, does this mean that dying is perpetual and continuous? Or is immortality a state of consciousness in an eternal present?
 * "I heard a fly buzz when I died" is one of Emily Dickinson's finest opening lines. It effectively juxtaposes the trivial and the momentous; the movement from one to the other is so swift and so understated and the meaning so significant that the effect is like a blow to an emotional solar plexus (//solar plexus//: pit of the stomach). Some readers find it misleading because the first clause ("I heard a fly buzz") does not prepare for the second clause ("when I died"). Is the dying woman or are the witnesses misled about death? does the line parallel their experience and so the meaning of the poem?
 * Personifies death as a refined gentleman who escorts the speaker on a carriage ride into eternity
 * Concept that death is eternal—no afterlife—sleepless—wonderless—without beauty
 * Death is personified as a gentleman caller or suitor. Thomas H. Johnson calls him "one of the great characters of literature." But exactly what kind of person is he
 * Is Death a kind, polite suitor? The speaker refers to his "kindness" and "civility." He drives her slowly; is this an expression of tact and consideration for her? If he is the courteous suitor, then Immortality, who is also in the carriage (or hearse) would be their chaperon, a silent one.
 * Is Death actually a betrayer, and is his courtly manner an illusion to seduce her? Because of his kindness in stopping for her, she agrees to go with him ("put away / My labor and my leisure too"). Is Death really cruel? She is not properly dressed for their journey; she is wearing only a gossamer gown and tulle tippet (//gossamer//: very light, thin cloth; //tulle//: a thin, fine netting used for veils, scarfs, etc.; //tippet//: covering for the shoulders). Is Immortality really an accomplice to Death's deception?
 * The drive  <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE">  [|symbolizes]     her leaving life. She progresses from childhood, maturity (the "gazing grain" is ripe) and the setting (dying) sun to her grave. The children are presented as active in their leisure ("strove"). The images of children and grain suggest futurity, that is, they have a future; they also depict the progress of human life. Is there   <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE">  [|irony]     in the contrast between her passivity and inactivity in the coach and their energetic activity?
 * The word "passed" is repeated four times in stanzas three and four. They are "passing" by the children and grain, both still part of life. They are also "passing" out of time into eternity. The sun passes them as the sun does everyone who is buried. With the sun setting, it becomes dark, in contrast to the light of the preceding stanzas. It also becomes damp and cold ("dew grew quivering and chill"), in contrast to the warmth of the preceding stanza. Also the activity of stanza three contrasts with the inactivity of the speaker in stanzas four and five. They pause at the grave. What is the effect of describing it as a house?
 * In the final stanza, the speaker has moved into death; the language becomes  <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE">  [|abstract]     ; in the previous stanzas the imagery was   <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE">  [|concrete]     and specific. What is Dickinson saying about death or her knowledge of death with this change? The speaker only guesses ("surmised") that they are heading for eternity. Why does she have to guess? She has experienced life, but what does she specifically know about being dead? And why didn't death tell her? If eternity is their goal, can Immortality be a passenger? Or is this question too literal-minded?
 * Why does Dickinson change from past tense to present tense with the verb "feels" (line 2, stanza 6)? Does eternity have an end?
 * In this poem, exclusion occurs differently than it does in "The soul selects her own society" Here the speaker is excluded from activities and involvement in life; the dead are outside "the ring" of life. As you read Dickinson's poems, notice the ways in which exclusion occurs and think about whether it is accurate to characterize her as the poet of exclusion.
 * Parallel ideas—Morn and Noon
 * Morn—funeral pass and Morn—the morning

"Faith" is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see— But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency.

Emily Dickinson Whatever her own views of poetry, critics have associated her work with **other traditions in literature**: 1. **The 17th Century Metaphysical Tradition**: She read a great deal and enjoyed the writings of 17th century authors. Example #585 2. **The Emersonian Tradition**: She frequently voices ideas of independence and individualism, of reaction against conformity and obeisance to tradition, providing us a poetic variation upon the theme of self-reliance. There is also the romantic notion of the relationship between beauty and truth. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." - John Keats. Example # 449. 3. **The New England Tradition**: It has been characteristic of New England people to be shy, withdrawn, to say little, but to convey much. Emily never writes a long poem, but tends toward epigrammatic, the concentrated, carefully wrought, gemlike lyric, whose mastery of ambiguity, of allusion, of compressed syntax, of the lyric outburst, is a central concern. 4. **The Nature Poetry Tradition**: Possible influence of William Cullen Bryant and Henry Thoreau. 1. Highly compressed, compact, shy of being exposed 2. Her style is elliptical - she will say no more than she must - suggesting either a quality of uncertainty or one of finality. 3. Her lyrics are her highly subjective. One-fifth of them begin with "I" - she knows no other consciousness. 4. Ambiguity of meaning and syntax. Wrote Higginson: "She almost always grasped whatever she sought, but with some fracture of grammar and dictionary on the way." 5. Concreteness - it is nearly a theorem of lyric poetry that it is as good as it is concrete. Even when she is talking of the most abstract of subjects, Emily specifies it by elaborating it in the concreteness of simile or metaphor. Examples #341, 712. 6. Use of poetic forms such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance; also onomatopoetic effects, #465. 7. Obscurity. Higginson said " ... she was obscure, and sometimes inscrutable; and though obscurity is sometimes, in Coleridge's phrase, a compliment to the reader, yet it is never safe to press this compliment too hard." **Themes In Emily Dickinson's Poetry** A few themes occupied the poet: love, nature, doubt and faith, suffering, death, immortality - these John Donne has called the great granite obsessions of humankind. **Structural Patterns** (from S. W. Wilson's "Structural Patterns in the Poetry of ED." //American Literature// 35: 53-59.) Major pattern is that of a sermon: statement or introduction of topic, elaboration, and conclusion. There are three variations of this major pattern: Themes         Death      Death, the ultimate experience, is for Dickinson the supreme touchstone. It reveals ultimate truth or reality; it makes clear the true nature of God and the state of the soul. She held the common Puritan belief that the way a person died indicted the state of his/her soul, a peaceful death being a sign of grace and harmony with God. When a much-admired friend died, she wrote to his minister to inquire about his state of mind while dying: "Please Sir, to tell me if he was willing to die, and if you think him at Home, I should love so much to know certainly that he was today in heaven." Death is <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE"> [|personified]   in many guises in her poems, ranging from a suitor to a tyrant. Her attitude is ambivalent; death is a terror to be feared and avoided, a trick played on humanity by God, a welcome relief, and a blessed way to heaven. Immortality is often related to death. Pain, Separation, and Ecstasy        Pain plays a necessary role in human life. The amount of pain we experience generally exceeds the joy or other positive value contrasted with pain. Pain earns us purer moments of ecstasy and makes joy more vital. The pain of loss or of lacking enhances our appreciation of victory, success, etc.; the pain of separation indicates the degree of our desire for union, whether with another human being or God. Food imagery is associated with this theme; hunger and thirst are the prerequisites for comprehending the value of food and drink. 1. Study a group of poems with related themes. Then write an interpretation of one of the poems that includes your expanded understanding of the way Dickinson uses the theme in other poems in the group. Choose from among the following (the poem numbers are from [|the Johnson edition] ): (a) poems of loss and defeat: 49, 67, 305. (b) poems about ecstasy or vision: 185, 214, 249, 322, 465, 501, 632. (c) poems about solitude: 280, 303, 441, 664. (d) poems about death: 49, 67, 88, 98, 153, 182, 241, 258, 280, 301, 341, 360, 369, 389, 411, 449, 510 529, 547, 712, 784, 856, 976, 1078, 1100, 1624, 1716, 1732. (e) poems about madness and suffering: 315, 348, 435, 536. (f) poems about entrapment: 187, 528, 754, 1099. (g) poems about craft: 441, 448, 505, 1129. (h) poems about images of birds: 130, 328, 348, 824. (i) poems about a bee or bees: 130, 214, 216, 348, 1405. (j) poems about a fly or flies: 187 and 465. (k) poems about butterflies: 214, 341, 1099. (l) poems about church imagery or biblical references: 130, 216, 258, 322, 1545. (m) poems about love: 47, 293, 299, 303, 453, 463, 478, 494, 511, 549, 568, 640, 664, 907. (n) poems about nature: 12, 130, 140, 214, 285, 318, 321, 322, 328, 33, 441, 526, 630, 783, 861, 986, 1084, 1356, 1463, 1575. (o) poems about doubt and faith: 49, 59, 61, 185, 217, 254, 324, 338, 357, 376, 437, 564, 1052, 1207, 1545. (p) poems about pain and anguish: 165, 193, 241, 252, 258, 280, 305, 315, 341, 348, 365, 410, 510, 512, 536, 650, 675, 772, 1005. (q) poems about after death or afterlife: 301, 401, 409, 413, 615, 712, 829, 964. Dickinson ’s Style Activity // “Analysis of Style” Activities // Read the given quatrains from well-known Dickinson’s poems. From “There’s a certain Slant of light” There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons— That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes— From “I taste a liquor never brewed—” Inebriate of Air—am I—   And Debauchee of Dew— Reeling—thro endless summer days— From inns of Molten Blue— From “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you—Nobody—Too? Then there’s a pair of us? Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know! First Activity: Second Activity Resources:  http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dickinson.html
 * Emily Dickinson’s Influences **
 * The Character of Her Verse **
 * **Love**: Though she was lonely and isolated, Emily appears to have loved deeply, perhaps only those who have "loved and lost" can love, with an intensity and desire which can never be fulfilled in the reality of the lovers' touch. Examples: #511, 478, 640.
 * **Nature**: A fascination with nature consumed Emily. She summed all her lyrics as "the simple news that nature told," (#441); she loved "nature's creatures" no matter how insignificant - the robin, the hummingbird, the bee, the butterfly, the rat (#1356 "The rat is the concisest tenant"). Only the serpent gave her a chill - #986. Other poems: #130, 214, 285, 318, 322, 328, 333, 526, 1463.)
 * **Faith And Doubt**: Emily's theological orientation was Puritan - she was taught all the premises of Calvinistic dogma - but she reacted strenuously against two of them: infant damnation and God's sovereign election of His own. There was another force alive in her time that competed for her interests: that was the force of literary transcendentalism. This explains a kind of paradoxical or ambivalent attitude toward matters religious. She loved to speak of a compassionate Savior and the grandeur of the Scriptures, but she disliked the hypocrisy and arbitrariness of institutional church. In one of her poems she approached God in prayer, but she could only worship, she could not pray (#564). At times she came to God in great confidence as in #1052. In another she addresses Him progressively as "Burglar, Banker, Father." (#49) There are other lyrics which express grave doubt as in # 338, 185 and 376. Other examples are #324,, 1207.
 * **Pain And Suffering**: Emily displays an obsession with pain and suffering; there is an eagerness in her to examine pain, to measure it, to calculate it, to intellectualize it as fully as possible. Her last stanzas become a catalog of grief and its causes: death, want, cold, despair, exile. In #241, Emily says "I like a look of Agony." Examples # 252, 258, 650.
 * **Death**: Many readers have been intrigued by Dickinson's ability to probe the fact of human death. She often adopts the pose of having already died before she writes her lyric - #712 and 465. She can look straight at approaching death - # 1100 and 547. Other examples # 49, 182, 1078, 1624, 1732
 * 1) The poet makes her initial announcement of topic in an unfigured line (examples: #241, #329)
 * 2) She uses a figure for that purpose (#318, #401).
 * 3) She repeats her statement and its elaboration a number of times before drawing a conclusion (#324).
 * Theme Activity **
 * Dickinson’s Style **
 * She uses the dash to emphasize, to indicate a missing word or words, or to replace a comma or period.
 * She changes the function or part of speech of a word; adjectives and verbs may be used as nouns; for example, in "We talk in //careless//--and in loss," //careless// is an adjective used as a noun. She frequently uses //be// instead of //is// or //are//.
 * She tends to capitalize nouns, for no apparent reason other than that they are nouns.
 * short, untitled lyric poems, usually no more than 20 lines
 * dense quatrains, or four line stanzas, that echo the simply rhythms of church rhymes
 * slant rhymes, or words that do not rhyme exactly
 * dashes used to highlight important words and to break up the singsong rhythm of her poems
 * unconventional capitalization and inverted syntax to emphasize words
 * omission of conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, or articles to heighten the effect of compression
 * Find examples of slant rhyme, inverted syntax, and omission of different parts of speech
 * Find at least two or three additional stylistic devices that you see at work in aany of the three examples. What effect do they create?
 * Look again at the eight poems in this Author Study. Choose one and discuss with other readers the stylistic devices you see at work.
 * slant rhyme: too/know
 * inverted syntax: Inebriate of air—am I
 * omission of different parts of speech: preposition—“There’s a certain Slant of light,//…Winter Afternoons—“; article—“Inebriate of…Air” And Debauchee of… Dew”
 * alliteration: “Debauchee of Dew”—alliteration emphasizes the phrase
 * metaphor: “from inns of Molten Blue”; this metaphor provides an image of the blue skies as the purveyor of the intoxicants of air and dew
 * simile: “There’s a certain Slant of light… that oppresses, like the Heft of Cathedral Tunes—“; this simile creates a solemn effect, comparing the effect of the light to the dirges emanating from an organ in the cathedral