In this first post, simply free-write for 20-30 minutes on one of the following poems you read tonight: 142, 327, 374, 54. Start your post with the number of the poem you've chosen.
Your post should touch on three things: something specific you understand, something specific you do not understand, and an idea about the poem as a whole.
I'm grading these only on the seriousness and effort you apply to them.
Due before the start of class Thursday.
Use this space to engage with our texts, with each other, and with your confusion.
327-
ReplyDeleteThe first time I read this poem, none of it made any sense to me, and I couldn't make any idea of it because every line seemed to go in a different direction. Then after reading it again and connecting specific words throughout it, the poem seemed really similar to the biblical story of Noah's Arc. Dickinson uses words like arc, rose, boat, and billows throughout the poem, which just so happen to be all capitalized. I didn't realize this until I picked out these words out and put them together because they gave me the idea of Noah's Arc. The words arc and boat became pretty obvious about this idea, and the word billows also helped add to the idea because a billow is a huge wave. The word rose refers to the arc rising and falling with the waves of the ocean. Making sense of these words as a whole really helped me make sense of the idea that I reached from the poem. One part that I don't understand is where Dickinson says, "This time-beyond the estimate/ Of Envy, or of Men-". I can't seem to make any sense out of the relationship between the estimate either being of envy or of men. Maybe its a question of whether God created the flood because people are envious, which is a sin, or the fact the people sin in general.
Poem 54
ReplyDeleteEmily Dickinson says she likes Agony because it is a true emotion that a person can reveal. She says that while we live on this earth, we put up fronts to portray things we are not. We also cover and attack things in other people. Dickinson depicts death as true as well. It is "impossible to feign" or impossible to imitate. It is something deeper than a cover or an attack. One part I do not understand is "The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung." If i were to guess, I would say that Dickinson is saying that only a true death is a painful one. "Agony" and "Anguish" are two strong words Dickinson uses. These words stick out not only because they are painful, but because they are capitalized. I think that she capitalized these words to put more emphasis in this poem to reveal that only through painful emotions and painful death are we our true selves.
Poem 54: As I read this poem, I found the theme to be death. To me, she is writing about the pain that accompanies death and the fact that there is no way around it. When she says, "I like a look of Agony,/ Because I know it's true--" she shows us that she likes to see people in pain, and showing the emotions that they are feeling. Someone is isn't afraid to show what they are feeling at the time of their death. It is difficult to hide a feeling of pain from the people around you and pain is truthful in her eyes. The next two lines, "Men do not sham Convulsion,/ Nor simulate, a Throe--" I understood men to mean the human race in general including women and children. She is telling us that there is no way to fake the pains that come to us during our lives and we need to embrace them and live with them. A throe is a strong, violent attack on the self, or the agony of death. This tells us that Dickinson believes that there is no way for man to fake pain and suffering when it is happening, and there is no way for people to fake it when it isn't happening. She also stresses that there is no way for man to fake the agonies of death by the last sentence of the first stanza.In the next stanza, the first two lines are death taking force. She says, "The Eyes glaze once--and that is Death--/ Impossible to feign." This shows the act of death taking over one's body and overtaking the person. The act of the eyes glazing over once is an image that to me depicts unconsciousness and subsequently death. And after that, she says, "Impossible to feign" which reinforces the idea that she thinks we don't have the ability as humans to fake death or pain of any sort. The last two lines were the most confusing to me, when Dickinson says, "The Beads upon the Forehead/ By homely Anguish strung." I thought that she was still talking about death, but I couldn't really get what she was trying to tell us from those two lines. I came to the conclusion that this poem was about death and the fact the Dickinson believes that there is no way for people to fake death and pain and that is comes from a truthful place within us.
ReplyDeleteKatie Thompson
ReplyDelete# 142:
In this particular poem, it seems as if Dickinson is opening up to the audience and revealing a much more vulnerable side of her. There are multiple themes that can be seen in this poem. At first, Dickinson talks about the experience of exclusion using the first person narrative. “The Heavens were stitched” creates an image of God or some other Greater Power excluding Dickinson. To me, it seemed comparable to the idea of something being set in stone, as if it were unyielding fate. Dickinson also brings feelings into the poem saying that she felt “the Columns close”. Having something close on you evokes an emotion or feeling of suffocation. Finally, “The Earth reversing Hemispheres” creates this feeling of instability as if nothing is in order. It is this exclusion, suffocation, and disorder that causes Dickinson pain. Experiencing this pain is what she calls “touching the Universe”. However, Dickinson did not pursue the Universe. She did not fight through the pain. Thus, she retreated, and this caused her to become lonely. She has trouble seeing what her purpose in life is. She states that she is simply, “A Speck upon a Ball (Earth)”. However, what I fail to understand are the last two lines of the poem. I do not know what Dickinson means when she uses “Circumference” and “Dip of Bell”. If anyone has any clue, please let me know!
54
ReplyDeleteAccording to Dickinson's poem, 54, death is the only genuine act undergone in life. She exhibits this belief in the first stanza by explaining how a throe or a convulsion cannot be feigned because the anguish that is felt in death can never be experienced by the twice (because one is dead after the first go-around). In the second stanza, Dickinson elaborates on her belief by stating that death is impossible to feign and that the beads of sweat excreted on a forehead are created by shear anguish, and not fabricated for any reason. Dickinson finds these acts to be genuine because they are only experienced once in life and can never be felt twice due to the fact that, after experienced, the victim is dead.
#142
ReplyDeleteIn the poem, Dickinson uses the imagery of “The Heavens were stitched” as a way to describe being trapped. There is no way out, and everything around her is slowly starting to form into one. Because everything is no conforming into one, Dickinson is now has new surroundings, and everything she once knew is no longer right. By “touching the Universe,” she focuses on the idea that one small action can have an effect on the outcome of our life. In this case, Dickinson ends up alone, and she becomes a small insignificant detail within the Universe. To try and figure out where she is within the Universe, she tries to go to the “Circumference,” which I assume to some type of a boarder or the “Dip of Bell,” which may be an area that she has never explored. I think this poem is about Dickinson’s feelings in a world where you constantly are feeling trapped or don’t understand what is outside of your boundaries until you are forced to explore them.
374
ReplyDeleteThis poem is about the heart. The imagery in the first stanza invokes music themes, with words like "measures," "bass," and "monotony." But these particular music words indicate that the music of the heart is more of a steady, unchanging bass line than a melody. On top of that, the monotony is "blue," which could either mean sad or blue like the sea, which was mentioned in the second line. So the heart is a steady bass line until, in the second stanza, a hurricane comes. The middle two lines of the second stanza are vague and confusing, but I think they mean that the hurricane decides what "area" of the heart it will need as opposed to ravaging all of the heart. This would help explain why the hurricane makes the heart learn that "calm" is just a flowery cover, as the third stanza says. This stanza claims that the cover can be blown easily by a "push" or a "questioning." The only reason it hasn't been blown until the hurricane, then, is that there has been nothing to challenge the cover. So the bass line from the first stanza is a way to describe the state of the heart when the cover was still up, but then the hurricane comes and the heart sees how easily its cover is blown.
142
ReplyDeleteWilliam Kelleher
I saw no way the heavens were stiched, most nearly means i dont see how heaven could be a scam. Dickinson undoubtley here believes in heaven, probably relating to the fact that she hopes her loved ones are there just as anyone else would hope. I do not however understand what the earth reversed her hemispheres means perhaps it has to do with being able to reach the heavens and touch the sky. I fund that line rather confusing because there can be so many interpretations for it. I think the main theme to the poem is however how she travels to the heavens and reaches salvation. Doing thus through travel the world and commiting good deeds or perhaps just going on this everlasting journey to seek out the heavens.
142
ReplyDeleteIn this poem, Emily Dickinson feels trapped by something bad that happened to her. She can't deal with the pain, or find a way out. She wants to believe that Heaven was "stitched" by stars but then the columns, metaphorically, begin to close on her. She says that "the earth reversed her Hemispheres", meaning night goes to day. Once it hits day, she believes she has broke free of this trauma, but it soon consumes her, yet again. The tone gets more dramatic and sad when she says that she falls back "alone". She then depicts herself as "a speck upon a ball", which just shows her a tiny fragment of our world. The most confusing part of this poem is how Emily goes "beyond the Dip of Bell". At first, it seemed that by using the word bell, there was some sort of liberation going on. Even googling it doesn’t give you much information. The closet and seeming most relevant idea I found was a diving bell which is a chamber used to transport divers into the depths of the ocean. It seems as if we could tie Emily leaving the deep abyss with this diving bell. The ocean is a theme we have already seen in reading her poems so it seems likely.
54
ReplyDeleteIn this poem she is talking about death as well as convulsion. I believe that convulsion is most nearly the same thing as the merge with Whitman. She says that convulsion can not be faked and that when it happens you'll know and there's no hiding it. She also says that you can't simulate it. This also relates to Whitman because In the eyes of Whitman, man must go through life on their
Own terms; not by copying someone else. In the second stanza, she talks about death. She explains how there avoiding death and that it's always there.
54
ReplyDeleteThis poem is about death, and how death is the only genuine act in life. In the first stanza it is talking about the look of death when it says, "I like a look of Agony". I decided that death was the only genuine act when it says, "The eyes glaze once-and that is death". You only get to experience death once making this a genuine act. The pain experienced in the first line are reiterated here when it says, "the Beads upon the Forehead" because they are sweating. This is an idea prominent in Dickenson's life where she has witnessed death and knows the signs of death.
The first lines draw one’s attention towards Emily Dickinson’s disposition towards men. A logical assumption would be that she was scorned, and that she has found that the only truth that comes from men is in pain and death. Whether her judgment is impaired by grief or anger plays a large role in how one interprets this poem. I choose to assume that her opinion is indeed influenced in some way. Emily Dickinson writes in a placid way about the convulsions of death, and this makes it a very disturbing poem. A former lover of Emily Dickinson’s would surely be quite concerned upon reading this poem. Dickinson is very concrete in the way that she confronts death, and it is dissimilar to the way that Walt Whitman describes it. Death and Birth are both described as merges, and this alone contradicts Dickinson. Whitman is a much less dark writer who focuses more upon the everlasting human experience. In this poem, none of this is mentioned. In two of the eight lines, Emily Dickinson mentions something related to lying and faking. This further proves that Dickinson is speaking about a personal experience. This experience must have been very graphic for her since she describes the beads of sweat upon the man’s forehead so eloquently.
ReplyDelete54
Delete327
ReplyDeleteI was confused when I first looked at this poem but I soon discovered the same meaning that Ashlee described. Dickinson is explaining Noah's Arc within this poem. Many of the capitalized words point directly to this answer. However, Dickinson chooses to tell the story through the eyes of a bird. It appears, to me, that this bird is debating on whether or not to stay, but this internal debate is different for the bird because she is not jealous or worried about men. She is only looking out for her self. I believe a bird is the perfect representation of a newly free woman because not only have birds represented those two concepts but also because birds are delicate, peaceful, and have always symbolized good. The second stanza explains that she did decide to stay on the arc, traveling the world. She also states that the Arc is her new home and she now views it as her birth place because her old home is gone and this journey is a new beginning for her. The only line I am slightly confused on is the first one, :She staked her Feathers," because it is not positive what she means by that phrase.
54
ReplyDeleteBristol Bell
Dickinson believes that agony is the easiest emotion and feeling to detect in a human being. She hints that humans tend to hide many of their other emotions, but to hide this one is impossible. She point out that it is impossible because of the physical reaction to the pain which gives it away with the beads of sweat on one's brow. She stresses all of the emotions by capitalizing each one such as Convulsion, Anguish, Agony, and Throe. Midway through the poem, she changes from talking about the hiding of a feeling to the topic of death. She ups it one notch and goes from just pain to life-ending affliction. This is when she starts talking about the physical reasons why it is impossible to fake pain. The Eyes that she mentions in this stanza confused me, but I believe it has something to do with a higher being such as God because it is capitalized and so is Death.
Luci Gordon
ReplyDelete374
I think Dickinson has just gone through a heart break and is describing the experience. She is comparing her heat to the sea in the first stanza. A heart can love and loved like a calm loving sea or a heart can be torn apart an rough like a wild stormy sea. In the second stanza She says it's like a hurricane. In the third stanza She talks about a wall is when your heart is calm. But in an instant one single action can change your heart. When she talks about the question I think she is talking about the question of love and when the heart breaks the question dissapears.
142
ReplyDeleteParker Hufft
In this poem, I believe Dickinson is possibly talking about what the journey of going to heaven. In the poem, the subject she refers to is the heavens. This is important to remember as she refers to it through out the poem. One part of the poem I understand is when she says that she saw no way that the heavens were stitched. In this line, I believe Dickinson is saying that it isn't true that the heavens are stitched up and no one can enter. She could be trying to get her reader to believe that people actually can make it to heaven. An idea and line that I had trouble with is "beyond the dip of bell". This line gave me trouble as Dickinson is describing herself floating out of the earth. She saws she is a speck and she goes out upon the circumference and beyond the dip of the bell. "Out upon Circumference" is describing is that she is leaving this earth as circumference is used to describe the length of a circle all the way around. So if she is out passed the earth I couldn’t figure out what the dip of the bell was.