Dickinson

Africa

well as im sure you've all guessed by now Poetry is not my forte, i cant stand it.

Anyway, ive done out a few points on Dickinson, i was wondering if someone would read over them give them a bit of a check and if possible add some more points for this poet?

Anyway.

Dickinson:
-Deeply insightful views and themes
-experiences of joy, death, despair ad nature
-far fetched imagery and language is full of paradox and the structure is almost hymn like, relfecting her religious upbringing.
-imagery is used to describe the indescribable.
-she deals with the numbness, isolation and lonliness of depression, and the thoughts that the mind can conjue.
-She posses complex views of nature - an admiration where she is moved by the beauty, mystery, exciting and exoticness, and yet views it as a very complex thing (as in Slant of Light). She also can use it as a metaphor as seen in a Liquor never brewed to depict playful drunkeness.
-Love: Hopeless longing, deals with the negative aspects, the destructive effets of love.
-Death: She is fascinated by death, the transtion between life and death, the Calvanist views of death and the way it is considered 'alien'.
-She talks about heavily relevant themes to today
-Suits age with style and language
-Original and individual, her views are 'oblique' or 'slant'
-Captures feelings and moods accuratly
-Use of '-', arbitrary use of capital, imperfect rhyme, defies expectation. She has 'no rules'.
-Story, narrative, she sees poetry as a quest for knowledge.

yeah i know not great i threw them together in about an hour. Anyone got more notes on her?

Cherry_Pie

NB buzz word!

Conceite - A far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things.

Example

I felt a Funeral in my brain , The opening line "I felt a funeral in my brain" , the motif of a funeral burial is a CONCEITE for the poets feelings of turmoil in her mind , "in my brain"

Cherry_Pie

Dickenson

• Romantic Sensibility
• Main theme – Human Condition
• Metaphysical Influence , abstract ideas pictures , i.e.
• Depression
• Hope
• Abstract ideas. Concerns in concrete images , i.e. compare hope – bird Depression – dead Joy – intoxicated (drunk)
• Images are conceits, i.e. unusual comparisons images and descriptions.



1. I taste a liquor Never Brewed

• Joy at Summer time.
• Central Motif – Drunkenness , Joy at Summer = Being Drunk
• Conceits
1. Bees and Butterflies gathering pollen
2. Herself – being drunk on Summer
3. I – all about her
4. Intensity of Joy

Syntax of the poem = structure of the lines.
I.e. we will go when John arrives,
When John arrives we will go

- = Pause, hesitation - am I –
Emphasising giving in to experiment
i.e. “Inebriate of air – I am –“

Use of Dashes

1. Visual Impact
2. Jerky Rhythms
3. Gives a type of Energy
4. Isolates each image

2. Hope is a thing with Feathers


• How undauntable the human spirit is – the human spirit is inconsumable, can’t be broken.
• Hope is a type of Grace, innate in us.
• Imagery in Conceits
• Hope = Bird = Soul
• “Sweetest – in the Gail – is heard”, mirrors the sounds of hope coming through the wind.
• Hope is a generosity of spirit.
• Altruism is hope, higher spirit
• Hope is not selfish

3. A Bird Came Down the Walk

1. Precision in description/Language
2. About Nature – hierarchy in nature
3. Anecdotal Quality – drama
4. Written in a Colloquial language
5. Captures the cadences of conversation (the natural ups and downs)

• Innocuous (bland) – then – are filled with meaning.

i.e., “And then he drank a dew – from a convenient grass”

• Decorum – Manners – of nature
• “Gloved” “Hurried” “Rapid” – prey , careful , NB “Velvet Head”
• “Velvet” , Tactile Image (texture)
• Stanza Break/ line break, description becomes ambiguous , renders to both
• Last six lines bird rejects offer of crumb, asserts with the wilderness
• Register of poem changes in last six lines
• Language, flight of the bird is almost ineffable (can’t be put into words) without using metaphor – go to imagination.
• Start

---

End
• Description

---

Imag , Ineffable

4. I could bring you jewels

• Contrast between Exotic and Ordinary , little flower on the measow symbolism of her own nature
• Playful Quality – first and last lines mirror Each other

baby*cham*bell

Dickenson appears to have been bi-polar. We see in her poetry she swings from a nervous breakdown (I felt a funeral...) to euphoria (I taste a liqour)
Her earlier poems are delicate and sensitive (Hope is the...), whilst her later ones are dark and tinged with opression (Slant of light ....(i think))

baby*cham*bell

Cherry_Pie wrote:

Dickenson




1. I taste a liquor Never Brewed

• Joy at Summer time.
• Central Motif – Drunkenness , Joy at Summer = Being Drunk
• Conceits
1. Bees and Butterflies gathering pollen
2. Herself – being drunk on Summer
3. I – all about her
4. Intensity of Joy

Syntax of the poem = structure of the lines.
I.e. we will go when John arrives,
When John arrives we will go

- = Pause, hesitation - am I –
Emphasising giving in to experiment
i.e. “Inebriate of air – I am –“

Use of Dashes

1. Visual Impact
2. Jerky Rhythms
3. Gives a type of Energy
4. Isolates each image

Inebriation= juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane.
The metre of the poem is like that of a Calvinist hymn, yet Dickenson speaks of feeling drunk- a grave sin in her religion.
She- "the little Tippler"-mockingly laughs at those- "Seraphs...swing their snowy hats"- who can't experience her joyfull drunkeness, because they are held back by religion (seraphs= symbols of religion, snowy hats= purity).
The seraphs are "holier than thou"- always chaste and pure.
Dickenson is showing us how restricting she feels her religion is, much like in "I felt a fly buzz....", when she uses the comic image of the fly "interposing" against the formality of the mourners at her bedside.
She is showing her rebellios side

Scarinae

Mention her idiosyncratic genius and disregard for the conventional

Scarinae

And to everyone - make sure you spell it Dickinson, not Dickenson

baby*cham*bell

wow- your right! i always spelt it "dickEnson", no one ever corrected me b4!

randomfella

did somebody say dickinson?

make sure u get adobe acrobat reader first.

baby*cham*bell

randomfella wrote:

did somebody say dickinson?

make sure u get adobe acrobat reader first.

Thats my grinds teacher! he gave us those notes bout 2 weeks ago! go Phillip! (crazy man)

randomfella

what poems are u going to discuss?
i'm going to do: and one more

i felt a funeral in my brain
i taste a liquor never brewed
i heard a fly buzz when i died

baby*cham*bell

randomfella wrote:

what poems are u going to discuss?
i'm going to do: and one more

i felt a funeral in my brain
i taste a liquor never brewed
i heard a fly buzz when i died

i picked 4 things i liked about dickinson to learn off, the poems which i talk about are
i heard a fly buzz when i died
i felt a funeral in my brain
hope is the thing with feathers
i taste a liqour never brewed

randomfella

yea actually hope is the one i'm doing aswel.

Call Me Jimmy

campion teaches in my school (skerries) and i got stuck with some other ****t teacher instead for the leaving course! gayness

BraveheartGal

Fishie wrote:

Mention her idiosyncratic genius and disregard for the conventional

her idio what now?

The Failed God

Anyone seen the sample 'model' answer for dickinson on the 2fm leaving cert website thingie? It states boldly that refering/quoting to 3 poems is sufficent BULLSH*T, i think its pretty bad advertising..

Con9903

I'm doing - I taste a liquor
- theres a certain slant of light
- hope is the thing with feathers
- I felt a funeral in my brain
- A bird came down the walk
- A narrow fellow in the grass
- I could bring you jewels
- The soul has bandaged moments
Too many?

Shyster

probably!! but then again by doing that, you're keeping your options open to answer any question on Dickinson so thats a good thing. On the other hand if something specific came up about say...nature in her poetry, you can only answer on a few of those so make sure you've enough to say on them to answer a whole q

Scarinae

BraveheartGal wrote:

her idio what now?

Idiosyncratic genius basically means that she was unique, bizarre, and amazing, but all in one lovely buzz-phrase. Just mention it in your Dickinson essay, it impresses examiners to use such phrases

BraveheartGal

idiosyncratic genius,idiosyncratic genius,idiosyncratic genius,idiosyncratic genius, idiosyncratic genius,idiosyncratic genius,idiosyncratic genius,idiosyncratic genius,


jesus how handy would copy and paste be in the english exam

thanks fishie

Scarinae

Say if they asked you to write about why Dickinson's poetry appeals to you, you could write "Her poetry really stands out from the work of other poets due to her idiosyncratic genius"

Yay!

BraveheartGal

*bows before your greatness*


ok
beat this
"she unhinges the normalising frames of our world, forcing them askew to make way for a joke or different take on the conventional"

*Smiles smugly*

Scarinae

BraveheartGal wrote:

she unhinges the normalising frames of our world, forcing them askew to make way for a joke or different take on the conventional

Ooooh, that's good

BraveheartGal

*curtsies*

Con9903

beat this, total ****ing crackpot

Africa

Yeah...i wonder what grade youd get if you put that one down

trishemurphy

if anyone got personal response to dickinson in the mocks heres the marking scheme
*powerful and unusual use of language including style, manner, phraseology, appropiate vocab,imagery, the sound of the poems, her use of the dash and unusual punctuation
*the unusual nature of dickinsons themes
*the dark oftentimes disturbing nature of her poetry
*her treatment of love and other abstract states
*the exploration of her interior
*the honesty of her work
*comparisons with other poems and poets on the course

**mark out of 50
p 15
c 15
l 15
m 5

randomfella

how will you answer the 'personal aspect' of the poetry question. What words, expressions are you using?

I feel ....
I think ...........
This affects me .....
...evokes..... in me
.....this aspect of her poetry fascinates me.
i get a feeling of....
....appeals to me


i always get stuck thinking of 'personal words'. Any help?

trishemurphy

i am amazed / never fail to amaze me
i am repulsed and somewhat disturbed by her ghoulish and nightmarish presentation of her mental turmoil
use the obvious one too like in my view in my opinion and i imagine
(a feeling) arises in me
i am mesmorized
can't think of anything else

randomfella

baby*cham*bell wrote:

i picked 4 things i liked about dickinson to learn off, the poems which i talk about are
i heard a fly buzz when i died
i felt a funeral in my brain
hope is the thing with feathers
i taste a liqour never brewed

what are the 4things, i'm curious? After hearing this talk, that u don't have to discuss a certain number of poems, i now realise you can refer to other poems in a line without discussing them in detail. Such as saying that dickinson's poetry is at a 'slant'... etc.

randomfella

are u mentioning any of her background information? if so, how are u working it in?