...Holly Pryor 372 After great pain, a formal feeling comes- The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs- The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go round- A wooden way Of ground, or Air, or Ought- Regardless grown, A quartz contentment, like a stone- This is the Hour of Lead- Remembered, if outlived, As freezing persons, recollect the Snow- First – Chill- then Stupor- then the letting go I believe Emily Dickenson is talking about the toll that a severe pain, possibly death, and how it makes you feel stiff, restless, and cold. Starting with the nerves you may feel “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs,” explaining how nervous and anxious feelings can arise from pain. She says “The stiff Heart questions,” which can be relatable to how deep, sincere pain can make your heart feel stiff, and sad, and all the many questions you may ask yourself after losing someone close to you. She says “This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As a freezing persons, recollect the Snow-“ touching base with the fact that no matter what, you will always remember this feeling of pain, like a person stuck in the snow will always remember the snow. Next she says “First – chill- then Stupor- then the letting go” , describing, basically, the whole process of losing someone you love. First you feel cold, stiff hearted, hurt, and next you go into a slump of stupor or sadness, and then there comes the part where...
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...the more complex poems that I have read. I do have a slight idea of her meaning of the poem and what the characters mentioned represent. I read the comments made by other people and their interpretations and have a better understanding on the poem. Biography Born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson never lived anywhere but Amherst and lived the last years of her life a recluse, writing poetry. After her death, her sister found hundreds of poems Dickinson had written, got them published, and Emily Dickinson's reputation grew from there, making her one of literature's most renowned poets. Although Dickinson is highly deemed as one of the most prominent poets in the field of American literature, during her lifetime she was chiefly known as a gardener rather than as a poet She never married She wore only white dresses for almost her entire adult life Although she was alleged to be a recluse, in reality, she was very much sociable. She frequently entertained guests at her home during her 20s and 30s She wrote nearly 2000 poems, most of which were published posthumously. During her lifetime she published only 7 poems Dickinson never named her poems; the titles were given by the early editors of her...
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...province, Emily Dickinson challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet’s work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. Like writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she crafted a new type of persona for the first person. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, like those in Brontë’s and Browning’s works, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. Like the Concord Transcendentalists whose works she knew well, she saw poetry as a double-edged sword. While it liberated the individual, it as readily left him ungrounded. The literary marketplace, however, offered new ground for her work in the last decade of the nineteenth century. When the first volume of her poetry was published in 1890, four years after her death, it met with stunning success. Going through eleven editions in less than two years, the poems eventually extended far beyond their first household audiences. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830 to Edward and Emily (Norcross) Dickinson. At the...
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...- - - - - - - - - - - - - Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She died in the same place on May 15, 1886. Today people know her as a fascinating, talented writer. Most of the pieces Emily wrote were poems. Emily was a very isolated individual. She rarely ever got out or had any contact with anybody outside of her home. Along with writing her poems she wrote letters to the people that she did have contact with. In the letters that she would write there would be poems somewhere within them. Emily wrote a total of 1,775 poems in her lifetime. Even though she wrote these poems she never let it be known that she had the capability to write poems with such elegance. All of the poems that she would write she kept hidden somewhere in her room. She would hide the poems in places like her window, under her bed, in corners of the room, and lots of other places. After Emily’s death the truth would be told about her secret talent. Emily’s sister, Lavinia Dickinson found around 900 of the poems Emily had hidden in her room. Her sister decided that the poems were good enough to be published. She went to a friend of the family where she would get help in editing and publishing the poems. Lavinia’s friend, Mabel Loomis Todd and a friend of hers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson began to put a lot of Said 2 effort of getting the poems published. In the year 1890 they accomplished in getting 115 of Emily’s poems published. After...
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...When someone dies, is the experience frightening or peaceful? One can argue that it is not death that is scary; it is the fact that it is unknown. Emily Dickinson is known for her poems on death. The poem Because I could not stop for Death argues on this topic. According to Dickinson, death is a peaceful experience. She emphasises this theme with the use of style, characters, and imagery. Emily Dickinson uses tender diction, and repetition to emphasise the theme of death being a peaceful experience. In the poem, the reader is continuously bombarded with the peaceful vocabulary. Words such as “kindly,” “slowly,” “civility,” “setting sun” and others are used to make the tone quite mild and smooth. These words provide encouragement to the previously established image in the readers mind. This is significant because it helps emphasize the theme even more. Next, Emily Dickinson uses repetition in her work to help support the theme. She constantly repeats the word “We,” that symbolises the fact that she1 and death are together, with no pain. If there were some sort of tension between the personified death, and the speaker, Emily Dickinson would have used a word that shows separation between the two distinct characters. By using the style of diction and repetition Emily Dickinson supports her theme. There are two (and a minor one)2 major characters in the poem that all share the show the element of peace. The kind characteristics of the speaker, death and the horses’ highlight...
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... Jealousy has A cunning face. Jealousy can live Without a mind, Without a heart, Without a soul, Even without God. Human jealousy And divine Ecstasy Are eternal strangers. Jealousy Is an aggressive boxer, A repulsive dancer, A hopeless singer And a useless storyteller. Jealousy, Before you entered Into my life, I was the world's Richest prince. Now that you are in me And I am for you, I have become The poorest street-beggar. Jealousy, You are my constant Nightmare-mind. You are my constant Love-absence-heart. Shortest is the distance From jealousy to hell. Jealousy, You are your own Ultimate Self-destructive-indulgence. HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS By: Emily Dickinson "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....
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...Still in the Gilded Age There are many things in life that appear attractive on the outside, but turn out to be quite the opposite on the inside. The forgotten fruit that was left to rot on the kitchen counter, the empty promises of a government body, the two-faced colleague at work… there are many of examples of beauty being only skin deep. Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” explores this theme of the gilded side of humanity. Roethke opens “My Papa’s Waltz” through the eyes of a small boy, lending an initial tone of naivety and innocence. This mood is reinforced through his use of rhyme scheme, which adds to the childish effect. However, this feeling is quickly subverted, as a more sinister interpretation can be seen midway through the poem. The boy describes, “The hand that held my wrist/Was battered on one knuckle;/At every step you missed/My right ear scraped a buckle.” (9-13), leading the reader to question what the actual meaning behind this “waltz” is. The minor mentioning of the unhappy mother, as well as the phrase, “But I hung on like death:” (3) is suddenly relevant; it suggests that the father may be an abusive alcoholic, deviating from the prior assumption that he was simply a happy drunk spending time with his son. This shift in reader interpretation can also be attributed to Roethke’s unique word choice. Take for example the word “waltz,” which is used exclusively in the beginning and ending stanzas...
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...Never Die – Live Forever If you were given the chance to live forever without ever dying, would you accept it? If so, would you be able to watching everyone you love and care about die? The poem I choose to do my paper on is “Because I could not stop for Death”. The poem was written by Emily Dickinson in 1863. There are 3 points in the poem that I want to point out and explain further in detail. The three things this poem has rhythm, imagery, and flashback. I want to start by talking about the rhythm in the poem. First I will start by explain what rhythm is? Rhythm is the structure and movement of the poem. This poem has great rhythm. She starts this poem out by saying in the first 2 lines what she wants. It says “Because I could not stop death- He kindly stopped for me-”. It goes on from there explaining that they are in a carriage. They drive slowly and they see different points in her life and moments that seem to mean a lot to her and they continue to a house that seemed to be as the poem says “A swelling of the ground”. Finally at the end of the poem, she surmised the horses head and they were toward eternity. The poem really makes you feel like you’re there by using great imagery. Imagery is the use of vivid or figurative language to represent objects, actions, or ideas. The poem “Because I could not stop death” had great imagery. She says that they were in a carriage and that they slowly drove. Reading those words just gives you an image of a carriage rolling down...
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...Emily Dickinson is one of the most well known poets of her time. Though her life was uneventful, what went on inside her house behind closed doors is unbelievable. After her father died she met Reverend Charles Wadsworth. She soon came to regard him as one of her most trusted friends, and she created in his image the lover whom she was never to know except in her imagination. It is also said that it was around 1812 when he was removed to San Francisco that she began her withdrawal from society. During this time she began to write many of her poems. She wrote mainly in private, guarding all of her poems from all but a few select friends. She did not write for fame, but instead as a way of expressing her feelings. In her lifetime only six of her poems were even printed; none of which had her consent. It was not until her death of Brights Disease in May of 1862, that many of her poems were even read (Chelsea House of Library Criticism 2837). Thus proving that the analysis on Emily Dickinson’s poetry is some of the most emotionally felt works of the nineteenth century. Miss Dickinson is often compared with other poets and writers, but unlike Shakespeare, Miss Dickinson is without opinions (Tate 86). Her verses and technical license often seem mysterious and can confuse critics, but after all is said, it is realized that like most poets Miss Dickinson is no more mysterious than a banker. It is said that Miss Dickinson’s life was starved and unfulfilled and yet all pity is misdirected...
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...person it could be the most boring, uninteresting, and redundant piece of literature they have ever read. In this semester of Literature 221, I was given the opportunity to read works from many different genres, time periods, and styles of writing. Some of which, like Emily Dickinson’s Life I and Life XLIII, Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, and Sherman Alexie’s What You Pawn I Will Redeem I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from. While others such as Ernest Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River, Mark Twain’s excerpt When The Buffalo Climbed a Tree from Roughing It, and the excerpt from Sula by Toni Morrison weren’t exactly my cup of tea. Emily Dickinson is a remarkable poet who often writes from a very emotional and self-examining perspective. This is why I really enjoyed the two selections of her work we had to read this semester. In her first poem Life I, the very first two lines make you stop and think, “I’M nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?” (Dickinson 2) Bam! I was hit in the face with self-reflection. Am I somebody? Or am I a nobody? Emily Dickinson continues by saying “how dreary to be somebody!” (Dickinson2 ) as if to be somebody is a bad thing. I love that Emily Dickinson questions the ideology of having to be surrounded by people and having to constantly be in a spotlight. Every move that you make is questioned and examined by people. Instead of being able to live for yourself and for your own happiness you are forced to live by the way...
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...I think Emily Dickinson can be described as an idiosyncratic poet. Her work is perhaps the most instantly recognizable of all poetry due to her untenable economy of expression. It cannot be denied that startling, thought provoking and unusual imagery coalesced with her original point of view aggrandise her poetry. These moments are elicited by her work and are perhaps the essence of her reputation and image as one of the greatest, but also one of the most eccentric poets of all time. The reader gains great insight into her imagination through the medium of her poetry. She conveys moments of utter elation in poems such as “I taste a liquor never brewed to profound experiences of utter despair and depression in poems such as “I felt a funeral in My Brain”. What distinguishes her the most for me is her gift for figurative language, imagery, metaphors and similes. She had the ability to immerse herself in English literature and produce beautiful, ravishing and beauteous material through the medium of aesthetic language. Her archetypal flood subject was immortality and she often wrote about death. For me, the most thought provoking evocation of immortality and death, is her poem “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”. Dickinson’s poems on the Hereafter are probably among her best known. She was clearly deeply interested in the process of dying, and returned to it again and again in her writing. In this poem, the poet seems to have died sometime in the past and is now looking back or...
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...Literature Prof. Maria Rasimas Nov. 3, 2014 Much like her poem “Because I could not stop for death”, Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” (Dickinson, 1861) , gives tribute to her religious roots. She uses a metaphor by describing hope in the form of a bird that becomes quite extensive as she builds on this metaphor later in the work. The use of a bird symbolizes freedom and almost an invincibility, capable of rising above storms and an element that is not easily defeated making it a sign of victory. While everyone will experience unfavorable times at one point or another in their lives Dickinson’s poem reveals that having hope can make all the difference in the world. In her line, “And sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all, and sweetest in the gale is heard” ( Dickinson) she brings her metaphor to life. The bird begins to sing as if to encourage itself never stopping regardless of what it is facing. Nothing can stop this hope and the singing is sweet to the spirit of the person giving him/her fuel to keep on going. “And sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird kept so many warm” Explains that the conditions of the storm would have to become rather harsh to consume the bird (hope) and destroy hope but even in that hope keeps on going. “I've heard it in the chillest land, and on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity” (Dickinson) suggests that no matter where you are in the world, the North pole or timbuck2, you will always...
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...Emily Dickinson believes that conformity limits one’s ability. She has written poems about societies’ views on conformity and the containment society has on different ideas and people. She even gives examples of this by explaining how society expected women to act as a wife. Through her poems, Emily Dickinson portrayed her views of conformity through the explanation of domesticated housewives in “She Rose to His Requirement” and the views of conflicting new ideas in society in “Much Madness is Divinest Sense.” “She Rose to His Requirement” explores what women during Emily Dickinson’s time had gone through. As the title suggests, women were expected to become a domesticated housewife to their husband. The first stanza describes that these housewives have to give up everything for the husband, “to take the honorable Work / Of Woman, and of Wife“(line 3-4). The “honorable work” Dickinson writes about is that women were relied upon to be in charge of the house. The ironic tone sets up the following stanza. It talks about everything a woman gives up when she becomes a wife. The wife loses things, “Of Amplitude, or Awe – / Or first Prospective – Or the Gold” (6-7). She loses her potential of becoming a great person when she decides to marry. She is also not given the chance to experience new things or even get a job for herself. The last stanza expresses the wasted potential of the wife. Dickinson compares a wife’s potential to a pearl that, “lay unmentioned… But only to Himself”...
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...As Albert Camus said in one of his writings, “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth of life.” The famous masterpiece of Albert Camus, The Stranger, gives us the true taste of existential philosophy and teaches us about the universality and inevitability of absurd in humans’ lives. However, one can meet very similar concepts and ideas illustrated in another piece of art, which is the movie “I Heart Huckabees” by David O. Russell. This philosophical comedy does, indeed, share many similarities with The Stranger. The four main principles of existentialism similar in the book and the movie are observation, meaning of life, coincidence, and absurd. The best place to start is one of the most important aspects of existentialism and absurd as well as of The Stranger, observation. In The Stranger, we read about the constant observation that is done by the main character, Meursault, and other characters as well. One of the examples from the book is when Meursault attends the funeral of his Maman. His monotone and indifferent style of description can be noticed throughout the book as in this part from the funeral when he tells the audience about a woman attending it: “A few minutes later one of the women started weeping. She was in the second row and I couldn't see her face because of another woman in front. At regular intervals she emitted a little choking sob; one had a feeling she would never stop.” As one can see, he discovers and examines the behaviors and appearance...
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...Emily Dickinson’s short poem “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” is, upon first glance, simultaneously mundane and complex. The speaker, for lack of much concrete evidence, it can be assumed is Dickinson herself. Very little is, in fact, revealed about the speaker; who is she? How old is she? How did she die? For the setting, the reader finds the speaker on her deathbed in her death throes surrounded by her friends and family. Where the speaker is exactly, and what time of day or year it is are not directly revealed. The audience is unclear; given that the speaker is speaking from beyond the grave – an unusual device that Dickinson uses in several of her poems, such as “Because I could not stop for Death”, in order imbue Death with an animate...
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