Billy Collins Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

Personally, I believe that the hardest part of poetry for me is finding the theme the author presents as it is always implicit. The theme is something one must deconstruct by using the devices presented by the poet. In William Stafford's “5 A.M”, the biggest challenge for me was to find the theme that was not stated directly. Theme can also be mistinturputated in many ways. Something that you may read in a poem may show a different perspective that the author is not trying to intend, and may throw you off the course of finding the theme. Reading poetry may not be as difficult as writing it for some, but personally I believe the analysation of a poem to find the theme is the most challenging aspect of

The poem begins to wind down with the undressing of the newest generation, the daughter. Just like her dad used to as a child, she is getting tired. The daughter is old enough to understand that a person needs to remove clothing to get comfortable before sleep “she has learned, recently, to undress herself” (21). The narrator has passed the knowledge he has learned from Frieda to

To begin, in the poem “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins he wants his readers to appreciate each poem as a piece of art. He wants his readers to look at the poem and get absorbed into the emotion of the poem instead of only wondering what the poem means. He uses personification in this quote “tie the poem to a chair with rope/ and torture a confession out of it” to express what we do to poems (356). We the readers should instead pay attention to the rhyme and style of the word. We should stop worrying about the meaning of the poem. This is similar to another author style in “Poem” by William Carlos Williams he uses a cat to movements in the “jamcloset” to show his readers that we should be like the cat. The cat takes its time to get around the “jamcloset” which is what the readers should do with poetry we must take our time to look at it and appreciate each word, line and stanza.

Mrs. Wright’s apron is also a symbol of oppression suffered by women. With dullness, she pleats it while giving details of her husband’s death. From the jail where it is obviously of no use to her, she requests that the apron be brought to her. The apron represents her identity of being a subservient housewife. The murder of her husband stripped her of this identity likewise, her marriage had taken her former identity of a choir girl. Being labeled a criminal is uncomfortable for her therefore, the want of her apron reflects that she has not yet accepted this new identity. Mrs. Peters seems to understand the need for her apron as she states, “I suppose

Upon first look, Billy Collins “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” seems to be a wild fantasy for Emily Dickinson that he is entertaining. Upon closer examination, however, the poem reveals his subconscious desire to have sex with his mother and his frustration about his inability to do so, resulting in the displacement of his sexual desires onto Dickinson.

It can change the way people are or how they live their lives. In “Working in the Dark” by Jimmy Santiago Baca he talks about what poetry is to him and how it saved him in prison. When asked where is poetry come from, he states “I come from poetry… I sustain myself on poetry… I walk upright on two feet because of poetry…

The last two lines of the poem are a timid reflection on what might happen “Had I the Art to stun myself/ With Bolts—of Melody!” (23-24). The idea that creation is a power that can get loose and injure even the creator illuminates why in this poem the artist positions herself firmly as a mere spectator. In these first two poems, we meet a Dickinson who is not entirely familiar to us—even though we are accustomed to her strong desire for privacy, these poems can be startling in the way they reveal the intensity of Dickinson’s fears. She is, after all, shrinking from what is dearest to her—nature, one of her favorite subjects, becomes a harsh judge, and poetry, her favored medium of communication, can suddenly render the reader “impotent” and the writer “stun[ned]” (19, 23). The extremity of her positions in shrinking from the small and beautiful things she loves creates the sense that this is just the beginning of a journey by leaving so much room for change.

Since the emergence of written history, many fables regarding war have encompassed a significant portion of prosodic literature. Two of the foremost war poets of the 19th and 20th century—Emily Dickinson and Rupert Brooke—have both written about profound implications of war on society and also upon the human spirit albeit in two very different styles. The book, Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, theorizes through Allie, that Emily Dickinson was indubitably the superior war poet. Furthermore, when we analyze their works as well, we realize the invariable fact that Dickinson’s work delves into war with a much more holistic approach as well. She not only honours the soldiers for their valiant efforts, but also deftly weaves notions of liberty and civilian duty in regards to war as well as compared to Rupert Brooke who carried a romanticized imagery of martyrs within his poetry. In summation, Emily Dickinson is a superior war poet for her incisive analysis of death, and human nature in correspondence to war as compared to the patriotic salvos of Rupert Brooke’s poetry.

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

I like this because the poem before each chapter has to do with what the chapter is going to be about. For example, in chapter 8 the poem talks about how the dad doesn’t know what’s happening and then there is silence. In chapter 8 it talks about how Shawn’s dad left referring to the what is happening to their family. It also says how Shawn’s mom has to tell her ex to be quiet, then there is silence. For me the way that the author sets up the chapter with the poem makes me want to keep reading, to see what will happen. It also sets up the chapter in a way for me to understand what I am

As noted in an article by Laura Woltag, “Connecting with texts through the study of literary devices helps readers to deconstruct these texts. Literary devices provide a conceptual framework for analysis that allows readers to interpret how these techniques affect their readings of texts” (Woltag). When reading a poem people should not read it to simply go through the motions, rather they should read it and

A well-written poem would help one to engage into the work with their senses. One should be able to ask themselves what the poem caused them to think, hear, see, feel, taste, and to determine what he or she learned from the poet’s words. Many people believe that because poetry is an enigmatic art, and that there is no way for sure to know the

While much of Emily Dickinson's poetry has been described as sad or morose, the poetess did use humor and irony in many of her poems. This essay will address the humor and/ or irony found in five of Dickinson's poems: "Faith" is a Fine Invention, I'm Nobody! Who are you?, Some keep the Sabbath Going to Church and Success Is Counted Sweetest. The attempt will be made to show how Dickinson used humor and / or irony for the dual purposes of comic relief and to stress an idea or conclusion about her life and environment expressed by the poetess in the respective poem. The most humorous or ironic are some of the shorter poems, such as the four lined stanzas of "Faith" is a Fine Invention and