Being one of the two mid-19th-century American geniuses (the other is Walt Whitman), Emily Dickinson knew her poetry was unacceptable by her society's standards of poetic convention, and of what was proper for a woman. Fewer than a dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime; more than a thousand were laid away in her bedroom trunk, do be discovered after her death. A genius who knew what she wanted and chose her seclusion in her self-claimed poetic house of "possibility," Dickinson declared that only the "fairest" visitors were admitted, indicating her aversion to publicity. Being a recluse, she nevertheless presented to us an amazing mind that is inquisitive and profoundly penetrating. The way she observed human vicissitudes was original and unorthodox. Her frequent ways of blending the holy and the profane, the eternal and the homely gave her poetry unexpected turns and startling twists.
We read quite a few poems by Dickinson in today's class. Have you found any poems that impress you as exceptional and unconventional? Which poem inspires you the most? What kind of profound understanding have you gained--in terms of human destinies, nature, a female artist's interior struggles, and so forth?
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The poem “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun” inspires me the most.
I am impressed by Dickinson’s use of “personification” in this poem.
She firstly portrays the “gun” as a person and describes how the gun feels about his master – a hunter.
From line 1 to 4, the gun is described as he has a mind of his own. He has been looking forward his master bringing him out for hunting.
Line 5 to 8, the gun “speaks” for his master by shooting and the mountains “reply” them immediately by echoing.
Line 16 to 20, the gun considers himself as a guardian of his master. If anyone tries to harm his master, his trigger would be pull with a “Thumb” and he himself would lay a “Yellow Eye” (bullet) on the enemy’s body.
As for my favorite section, line 21 to 24, the gun feels sorrow like anybody does. He clearly knows that he himself is gun and it’s impossible for him to “die”. He is afraid of his master would pass away one day and leave him all alone. He hopes his master could live longer than him. He has the power to kill but he doesn’t have the power to “die”.
The poem [After great pain, a formal feeling comes] impresses me the most. Emily Dickinson uses exquisite words to express the feeling after great pain.
In the first stanza, the words “formal”, “ceremonious”, “Tombs”, and “stiff” are written in order to express that there are no feelings after great pain. The word “He” at the third line means Jesus. I think the way she connects her pain with Jesus` is very impressive. It shows how painful she is.
n the second stanza, she uses “The Feet, mechanical, go round” and “Ought” to tell us after pain, we still have to do the daily routine. And the words “Wooden” and “Quartz” again show that there is no feeling after pain.
In the third stanza, she uses “This is the hour of Lead” tells us that time passes slowly. I like the last line the most. It says “First─Chill─then Stupor─then the letting go─”. I think this really is the situation when we encounter great pain. We first feel afraid, then feel numb, at last we let go of it.
The poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" impresses me the most.Emily Dickinson used many word to describe the narrow felllow--snake.
In the fifth line,she used "the grass divides as with a comb" to let reader to imagine the snake climbing on the plain.
The fourteenth line,she describe the shape of snake as a braid be unbraided,that impresses me a lot.
I think that her description is very appropriate,but I know that I would never use it because I can't even think about that!!
I like Emily Dickenson’s poem very much. Her poems are very multifactor. There are mad, sad, encourage tones so forth. it is very different from other famous writers. some of them are usually have one or two styles. Besides, those writers usually makes me drowsy, they always talk about honey, fairy ,lover so forth. I am not interested in it. on the other hand, Dickenson’s poem have lots of imagination and full of fun. she is so talent and brilliant that she can writes many kinds of writing styles without going outside.
in Last class, I like “I stepped from plank to plank” most. I can imagine the situation how dangerous is it. sea under the plank, stars are so light in the huge sky. Just like we see in the cartoon…and this poem is so short but convey to us so clear. Dickenson is a real genius. staying at home all day but have the large power to write, it is so amazing.
The poem“I stepped from Plank to Plank”impresses me a lot. Emily Dickinson uses simple words to describe profound philosophy. In first stanza she uses the word plank. Plank seems like a normal thing as board but writer brings her imagination picture it as life. She also indicates that life is full of adventures. People need to pay attention to their steps of walk. In the last stanza the precarious symbols that life is full of many obstacles and dangerous. However, after go through many difficulties, people will gain many experiences in their life. The reason why I like this poem is that she put many daily elements in this poem and is easy for me to understand. After I read this poem, I know that life’s uncertainty makes it more splendid and colorful. Sometimes life experiences can’t be taught and people need to learn of their own.
I am impressed by "Wild nights! Wild nights!" which is a poem of unrestrained sexual passion and rapture. I think the sentence “were I with you” carries the implication that the speaker is remembering past pleasures and yearns for more. Emily Dickinson used many ways to imply her voluptuousness in the gratification. For example, she used “in port” to imply the embrace of lover, and the word“Futile”to describe the pushes and pulls of nature and society and these things can't tear her heart away from the one she loves. She also used the image of the sea to describe her passion. On the other hand, this poem could be seen as a portrayal of a religious experience; in this interpretation, the lover is God. We can see this as a description of the joy which one feels while communicating with God. And in the view of modern psychoanalysts, they see it as sexual for one speaks of rapture and ecstasy during his union with God.
The main characteristic of Emily Dickinson’s poems is the use of dashes. She uses a lot dashes to express the continuation of her poems. Also, she uses capitalism to let the readers focus on the important words and intensify the image she wants to convey.
The poem “ Because I could not stop for Death-“ inspires me a lot. In the poem, Emily Dickinson use personification to describe the relationship between human and death. She compares the narrator as a bridegroom and the death as a bride. I think this kind of usage is very interesting and amazing. She uses this kind of image to describe that we can not avoid the coming of the death. Also, at the end of the poem, she thinks that people would not go to paradise or retain eternal. This principle is very unorthodox and unconventional. I think Emily Dickinson is a genius. She had a sequestered and obscure life but her imagination could extend to such large way. Her amazed talent really inspires me a lot.
After I read Emily Dickinson poems, the poem which is most impress me is "I stepped from Plank to Plank". This poem is talk about the life is unknown, and pretty dangerous. Everyday may be the last day. I love this poem, also the poem express my feeling in my life.
The profound understanding I gained is people should cherish everything you have and give mercy to unfortunate people.I really do like this poem, if the question is "which poem inspires you the most", i would say this so.
The destinies of human is full of mysteries, I think Emily Dickinson also struggled in this life too.
I think that “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—” is the most impressive. I detect some tensions taking place between the speaker’s life and the anger. In the line 1, “My life” is personified as if it were able to stand like a person. Also, her life is the simile of a gun becoming representative of the speaker’s power. The gun is a symbol of power and violence. Guns are dangerous because they have the power to take life away instantly. Moreover, here the gun has been loaded. She can hunt with it and it is deadly. In the line 5, the “Sovereign Woods” indicate that the speaker, narrator, or character is far away from civilization or is lost in a maze of ideas and problems. Hunting is a metaphor for letting anger loose, and the doe is a symbol of the target she can kill. In the line 11, the speaker is like “a Vesuvian face.” The volcano, Vesuvius, erupted in 79 A.D. in northern Italy. The volcano here helps me imagine and sense how much anger the speaker gets and how much destruction this anger works. As we know, Emily Dickinson could not do some magnificent things such as working outside or publishing her works because she was a woman. Therefore, she wanted to convey how much lethal and deadly her rage produced by writing this poem—“My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—.”
I have found [ My Life had stood —a Loaded Gun—] that impress me as exceptional and unconventional. In this poem, we don't know whether the speaker is a man or a woman, but there are certain clues that suggest a conflict between male and female identities. For instance, the pronouns in the poem are all male pronouns “him, his, and he”. And we know that a doe “the animal the speaker hunts” is a female deer. The exact meaning of this poem might be obscure, but we can be pretty sure that there’s a conflict between masculinity and femininity.
[ Because I could not stop for Death—] inspires me the most. We find out that the memory of the speaker's death day is being told centuries into the afterlife; so, Dickinson explores the idea of perpetual life. There is life after death, which offers an explanation as to why the speaker's so calm about everything. Death's not the end, just one step closer to eternity.
On the other hand, the poem doesn't really address love head-on, but it certainly gives us a glimpse into courtship and romantic love. The speaker's tone in the poem makes me believe the speaker does not fear death, but feels the opposite toward it. If the poem did not explore death with an underlying theme of love, the acceptance of death might eventually be hard for the reader to believe.
Emily Dickinson had her own style of writing poetry. She used many dashes to give the readers the feelings of continuance, and she also capitalized some words in her poetry to let the readers know what she was trying to emphasize.
The poem [Because I could not stop for Death] inspires me the most. Emily Dickinson compared the speaker as a bride and the Death as a groom which are absolutely amazing comparisons.The speaker says"Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me-" which makes the Death like a gentleman, also She used the words "labor" and "leisure" to describe her life. From the third stanza to the first line of the fouth stanza actually gives me a vivid image of the speaker and the Death are in the car passing the school, the Fields of Gazing Grain, and the Setting Sun. What impresses me the most is the fifth stanza the speaker says "We paused before a House that seemed/A swelling of the Ground-/The Roof was scarcely visible-/The Cornice-in the Ground-" At first I thought the speaker was talking about the house, but then I realized that she was talking about the grave, and that is the house the bride and the Death are going to live in.
I have great feeling about the poem [After great pain, a formal feeling comes-]
I think that Emily Dickinson gave a vivid description about those feeling. After I suffered a great pain of the death of my grandmother, I felt everything becoming no more important and just want to escape.
The speaker used many interesting word to express the heavy feeling after the great pain such as Quartz, stone, lead and wooden way.
In the first stanza, the speaker said that the nerves sit ceremonious like tomb; it shows that she no longer have feeling about the great pain. In the third stanza, the speaker said that this is the Hour of Lead; this also gave me a great impression, this sentence also shows that she does not have any feeling about this.
The most impressive poem written by Emily Dickinson to me is "I stepped from plank to plank". The poem impressed me mostly because of its theme. The theme is mainly talking about a kind of a feeling to people who have the uncertainty of what will happened tomorrow. I actually believe everybody might have this kind of experiece or feeling once or many in our life.
Sometimes I would have the same feeling, but I don't know how to describe it. Her poem just shown me one way of describing it.
The most impress me as exceptional dunconventional poem is "A narrow Fellow in the Drass" the person in this poem is a boy and he use a very innocent and cute tone to wrote a horrible serpent, in the poem the boy use many adjective to describe the serpent, like a Narrow Fellow,A spotted shaft,Whip lash.And say the grass open by the serpent. the boy in the poem was very love snakes is almost like carry away his mind! i am very impress by this poem is because the tone and because it is a riddle poem i think it is very interesting.
Emily Dickinson is a reclusive poet. But she was filled with imagination. [Because I could not stop for Death] is the most impressed poetry we discuss in the class to me. The words of Dickinson’s poems were emphasized by capitalization. “Death” is the theme of this poem. But Dickinson used an unconventional way to describe. “I” means the bride, and “Death” means a groom. The “Carriage” means a hearse that waits for her and takes her away with Death. The bride passes her different age of her life. And then she pause before a tomb－means death(eternity). I think Dickinson used a happy wedding to describe death and deny the Christian creed is really stunning and creative to her living environment.
The poem that impressed me the most is [I dwell in Possibility]. Emily Dickinson lived a reclusive life, shutting herself away in her house. Poetry gives her the freedom to see beyond the walls of her house. In her poetic world, there is no limitation and full of possibilities. Sometimes, I wish to shut myself away from society just like her, and dwell in my world of fantasy, away from reality. Of course, it is impossible, but it will not hurt anybody just to dream. Her poems give me the strength to dream and live in reality.
In the poem "Because I could not stop for death", the speaker sees death as a gentlemen who takes her in a carriage to see the many stages of life: “labor and leisure” They go on ride through childhood, mature age (Gazing Grain) and aging to death (Setting Sun).
In a traditional woman’s life; however, time doesn't matter anymore. The horses' head go towards eternity. But, it is not a very romantic view of how it is to die. I imagine how Emily Dickinson felt when she composed this nice piece of poetry. In my opinion, this poem is an argument for women who was controlled by the social expectation, and this on-way trip is not to the” eternity”, but to the underworld.
I like the poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" because the description of snakes are so vivid.
When I read this poem in the second stanza I can nearly see this narrow fellow creeping over and pressing the meadow.Also because it is so close to my feet i can almost feel the temperature of this fellow,so cold and terrified.
And in the fourth stanza I can imagine the dispatch of the snake's escape when I try to catch it.This poem is full of action ,clear imagination and observation.So that is why this poem impress me most.
In these Emily Dickinson’s poems, “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!” attracts me the most. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker calls out “Wild Nights- Wild Nights! / Were I with thee / Wild Nights should be / Our luxury!” There are usually little sounds in nights and therefore nights are commonly portrayed as soundlessness. But in this poem, the nights become wild and thus an image of fluttering grasses with blowing wind appears. The tones of the speaker are ecstatic and crazy and thrilled because it is the time that belongs to the speaker and “thee”, which suggests God in this poem. Besides, the word “luxury” creates an interesting atmosphere as if there were secrets between the speaker and God and signifies the fulfillment of heart.
Again, the speaker calls out and says “Done with the compass- / Done with the Chart!” This connotes the speaker’s heart forgetting the direction and forgetting the location because the speaker is in the understanding of God’s words. Finally, in the last stanza, the speaker gets to a place--Eden, where Almighty lives out there. In that place, the speaker finds himself and immerse in the enjoyment of God.
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