Emily Dickinson

    Sound devices are another type of literary device that Dickinson makes use of throughout the poem. Examples of consonance include,  Bustle in a House,   solemnest of industries,  and  not want to use again/ until Eternity.  The  s  sound in bustle, house, solemnest, and industries sounds like the whispers of people talking but trying to be quiet. The  t  sound in not, want, to, until, and eternity gives the last few lines a sense of finality, like the finality in death. There is also an example of

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“is a profound portrayal of the debilitating process of grief human beings undergo when confronted with a horrific tragedy. The response to that ultimate pain is the predominance of numbness, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-“(1-2). This is a poem that must be read slowly to become saturated in the melancholy, the dehumanization of suffering as it affects each aspect of the body without reference to the chaotic emotionality of it. The abundance of metaphors within Dickinson’s poem provides the means to empathize the necessity of numbness. It is also through the use of punctuation and capitalization, depicting the presence of a

Emily Dickinson was one of the best American poets, but she is very famous for being a secluded writer. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1846 in Amherst, Massachusetts and she died on May 15, 1886 at the age of 55 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her isolation from the outside world still confuses literary critics and readers of her poetry and letters. There are many theories developed over time about her seclusion. Some people believe her secluded way of life was her own choice but she was very close to her family. Emily Dickinson lived in a happy home and went to a school during her life. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and lived there all her life most of her life. An introduction into Emily Dickinson’s poetry themes, and discussion about the isolation in her life, and discussion about the isolation in her poetry will be examined in the paper.

Emily Dickinson was one of the best American poets, but she is very famous for being a secluded writer. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1846 in Amherst, Massachusetts and she died on May 15, 1886 at the age of 55 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her isolation from the outside world still confuses literary critics and readers of her poetry and letters. There are many theories developed over time about her seclusion. Some people believe her secluded way of life was her own choice but she was very close to her family. Emily Dickinson lived in a happy home and went to a school during her life. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and lived there all her life most of her life. An introduction into Emily Dickinson’s poetry themes, and discussion about the isolation in her life, and discussion about the isolation in her poetry will be examined in the paper.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most influential poets of all time, and has a unique way of using literal imagery to paint a picture in the readers mind. The best poets are those that excel at using their words to create clear, concrete images and intrigue their reader. Dickinson began writing poetry around the year 1855, and prospered for another 10 years. Some of her most famous poems include “I Taste a liquor Never Brewed”, “Success is Counted Sweetest”, and “Wild nights – Wild Nights!”, all of which have influenced many aspiring writers to become poets, and show her true colors as a poet. Among her works of poetry, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, is one that resembles the frequent patterns of Dickinson’s style of

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “465 I Heard a Fly Buzz—when I died—”, uses its form to emphasize the distracting elements in a human’s life. In the case of this poem, the appearance of multiple caesuras throughout the poem asserts the distractions the speaker is experiencing. With the help of the caesuras, the readers get to experience death as real life and not like as it is seen in the movies and this shows that distractions are around us at all time. Along with caesuras, Dickinson structures her poem with four stanzas. Each stanza represents the speaker getting closer and closer to death. the third stanza, however, there is a shift. In addition to caesuras, the shift brings in to play the element of distraction, which is the main theme of the poem.

In Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death,” there is much impression in the tone, in symbols, and in the use of imagery that exudes creativity. One might undoubtedly agree to an eerie, haunting, if not frightening, tone in Dickinson’s poem. Dickinson uses controlling adjectives—“slowly” and “passed”—to create a tone that seems rather placid. For example, “We slowly drove—He knew no haste / …We passed the School … / We passed the Setting Sun—,” sets a slow, quiet, calm, and dreamy atmosphere (5, 9, 11,

This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.

I'm Nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickinson reminds me of the song, "You belong with me" by Taylor Swift. These two works speak of the author being behind the scenes in life. The writers are unnoticed by society and watch life from the back of the room. Content to watch life play out for others, without the inconvenience of social rules and etiquette. Swift proudly sings "She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers" (Swift). Dickinson and Swift, in reality, are nothing alike, Swift is a brash famous woman, while Dickenson was a recluse. This work is excitedly unemotional while imparting wisdom. Dickinson's poem playfully speaks of human's social fears through voice, conventional symbols, and stanza.

In addition to poetic devices used, the poem has a structural pattern that deepens the meaning by adding emphasis. The poem structurally consists of six stanzas with four lines each. These stanzas use an 8,6,8,6 syllable scheme for most of the poem. In addition, each line is written in iambic meter meaning every second syllable is stressed. This is also a common syllable scheme for ballads and hymns. Knowing Dickinson’s background, this syllable scheme adds meaning as a ballad is used to narrate something and a hymn is a religious song or poem. In the poem, there are unsystematic capital letters and dashes in multiple locations. However, these capital letters have meaning behind them. In lines one and four “Because I could not stop for Death/And

In the poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" Emily Dickinson exposes a person's intense anguish and suffering as they sink into a state of extreme madness. The poem is a carefully constructed analysis of the speaker's own mental experience. Dickinson uses the image of a funeral-service to symbolize the death of the speaker's sanity. The poem is terrifying for the reader as it depicts a realization of the collapse of one's mental stability, which is horrifying for most. The reader experiences the horror of the speaker's descending madness as the speaker's mind disintegrates and loses its grasp on reality. "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,"

Dickinson’s poem " I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", is a prime example of complicity embodied by simple style and language. In this piece, Dickinson chronicles psychic fall. The use of many different devices such as sound, repetition, and metaphors, all help to develop the theme of the poem.

In the poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” Emily Dickinson uses symbolism to convey some sort of mental funeral that the speaker is experiencing. The funeral image that Dickinson depicts in the first line of the poem: “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” does not literally represent a funeral, but it is used to symbolism a mental breakdown and agony that the speaker is going through. By using this symbolism, the speaker is imagining the death of old ways of thought. Dickinson writes that when the funeral service was “like a Drum—“ (Dickinson 43) and that it “Kept beating—beating—till I thought My Mind was going numb—“ (43), leaving readers believing that the speaker is going mad. By depicting this image, Dickinson reveals that with the death of old thought; there is some sort of numbness or pain that is necessary to “progress to a better state” (Goldfarb 2). By repeating the beating sound two times, along with the rhyming sequence in the previous lines of the poem, Dickinson is stressing the numbness and the importance of it.

This poem conjures images of a solemn ceremony in which the soul reigns superior by shutting out everyone, including the emperor, similar to the shutting out of everyone that Dickinson did. In one of Dickinson’s most famous poems, “I heard a Fly buzz,” the theme of death is presented as well as a symptomatic characteristic of bi-polar disorder. The poem itself epitomizes her preoccupation with death and the macabre and also shows how the small, normally ignorable sound of a fly buzzing becomes the only thing heard, she magnifies this sound in a situation when it seems that everything else is much more important, but this inability to drown out extraneous noises is typical of someone suffering from manic-depression. The form of this poem employs all of Dickinson’s formal patterns: trimeter and tetrameter iambic lines, her specific use of the dash to interrupt the meter of the poem, and it is in ABCB rhyme scheme.

Emily Dickinson was one of the many famous American poets whose work was published in the 19th century. Her writing style was seen as unconventional due to her use of “dashes and syntactical fragments”(81), which was later edited out by her original publishers. These fragmented statements and dashes were added to give emphasis to certain lines and subjects to get her point across. Even though Emily Dickinson was thought to be a recluse, she wrote descriptive, moving poems on death, religion, and love. Her poems continue to create gripping discussions among scholars on the meaning behind her poems.