Notes

Outline

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emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) Though virtually unknown in her lifetime, Dickinson has come to be regarded, along with Walt Whitman, as one of the two quintessential American poets of the 19th century. Dickinson lived an introverted and hermetic life. Although she wrote, at the last count, 1,789 poems, only a handful of them were published during her lifetime. All of these were published anonymously and some may have been published without her knowledge.  Dickinson died on May 15, 1886. The cause of death was listed as Bright's disease (nephritis). After her death, her family found 40 hand-bound volumes containing more than 1,700 of her poems.  Lavinia Norcross Dickinson (1833–1899), often known as "Vinnie", encouraged the posthumous editing and publishing of her sister's (convetionalized) poetry. Her poetry is often recognizable at a glance. Her facility with ballad and hymn meter, her extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in her manuscripts, and her idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery combine to create a unique lyric style.

Guidelines for Reading Dickinson's (and all) Poetry:  13 questions ßptq (see handout) Speaker. Who is the speaker? What person (first, second, third) is ED speaking in? If it is the first person plural, with whom has she aligned herself? To whom is the poem addressed? Setting or Situation. What is the setting? Real? Abstract? What about the situation? Is there action in the poem? What is it? What are the verbs? What is their tense? Their mood (indicative, subjunctive, interrogative)? In what ways does their syntax vary from what you expect? Are any of them archaic or unusual?  What is the form of the poem? Closed? Open? What is the meter? the rhyme scheme? Where does ED depart from these patterns and forms? Why? Dickinson is noted for her use of special kinds of rhyme. Where does she use the following, and for what effect? a. slant rhyme: a kind of consonance (relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree but the vowels that precede them differ: add/read, up/step, peer/pare, while/hill). b. eye rhyme: rhyme that appears correct from the spelling but is not so from the pronunciation, such as watch/match, love/move, through/enough. c. true rhyme: identity of terminal sound between accented syllables, usually occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse. The correspondence of sound is based on the vowels and succeeding consonants of the accented syllables, which must, for a true rhyme, be preceded by different consonants. Thus "fan" and "ran" constitute a true rhyme because the vowel and succeeding consonant sounds ("an") are the same but the preceding consonant sounds are different

"What elements are repeated?" What elements are repeated? Inverted? Why? What instances of repetition does she use? What is the effect of the repetition?  What figures of speech does the poem contain? metaphor? metonymy? synecdoche? personification? extended metaphor? What kind of figure does she use as a comparison (vehicle)? Where has she used this before and with what kinds of meaning or resonance?  What kinds of images does she use? olfactory? tactile? visual? auditory? thermal? Characteristic Dickinson images include patterns of light/dark, bee/flower, mind/body, life/death. Do these occur here? In what combination?  Does the poem have an effective, striking, or climactic moment? Does it come to some kind of resolution? What kind? What recognition does the speaker's persona achieve, or does the poem chronicle simple description and observation?  Tone. What is the tone of the whole? Solemn? Playful? Irreverent? Mournful? Objective? What is Dickinson trying to convey?  Tradition. In what ways does she allude to other works or poetic traditions? In what ways might this poem be an "answer" to another author?  Rhetorical figures. Where does Dickinson use paradox? hyperbole? anaphora? apostrophe? litotes? Why does she use them?  Language. Note any words that are used in an archaic, special, or unusual way, especially words of three syllables or more. (These are less common in Dickinson's work than one- and two-syllable words.) Look them up in the dictionary, being careful to note obsolete or secondary meanings as well as primary ones.

Close Reading:  A Certain Slant of Light     There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons– That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes– Heavenly Hurt, it gives us– We can find no scar, But internal difference— Where the Meanings, are– None may teach it– Any– ‘Tis the Seal Despair— An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air— When it comes, the Landscape listens— Shadows– hold their breath— When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance On the look of Death–

"Another close reading:" Another close reading:  A bird came down the walk Contrasting images of what a bird “is.”  Through imagery, diction, and alliteration, she represents the grounded then the airborne bird. Jerky, sudden movements mirrored by the short, choppy diction of first stanza.  Abrupt, like a bird’s sudden starts and stops. Bites the worm, looks around, drinks, (sips– seems almost like a prissy little person) preens.  Bird represented in images that mimic his movements on the ground.  Eyes are “frightened” and “bead”y.  Sharp, like pellets, in danger, cautious on the ground. He hops around, enjoys his Dew, steps aside to let a Beetle pass (polite/friendly) but still cautious and timid.  Human-like, but still an animal. But then, he stirs a “velvet” head and the mood changes, inspired by the speaker’s intervention

"Now," Now, we get the speaker’s intervention.  (It is not necessarily Dickinson herself.  Be careful of this with poetry) The speaker offers a “Crumb”.  This startles the bird’s “caution” and he “unrolls his feathers” and “rows softer Home” The smoother diction and “s” based alliteration becomes more smooth, and flowing.  Now the soft “c” and “s” sounds in the last two stanzas create a sense of flowing, sibilant air.  This brings the motion of the bird in flight out– moving fluidly on wind currents. Finally, the speaker compares the bird to a Butterfly and a soft boat whose oars “row” “silver” and seamless, in the midday (Noon) sun leaping “plashless” as they swim in the air. Note: leaving off the “s” in splash only emphasizes all the other “s” words in the stanza. The fluid, graceful movements of a bird in flight are captured in the last stanzas’ use of alliteration, and the quick, abrupt diction of the first stanzas mirror a bird’s movements on the ground.  Nature is both beautiful & full of danger.

Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) contemporary with Mark Twain, grew up in South Berwick, Maine, where she lived much of her life. After establishing herself as a short story writer for adults and young people, she formed a close friendship with Annie Fields. After Mr. Fields' death in 1881, Jewett and Annie Fields lived and traveled together for the rest of Jewett's life. Jewett formed friendships with a number of the major artists and intellectuals of her time, including Willa Cather, Henry James, Alice G. Howe, Rudyard Kipling, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Celia Thaxter. Jewett's best known works are “A White Heron,” and The Country of the Pointed Firs, a novella.

Local “Regional” Color, or Domestic Goddess? Jewett’s fiction is characterized by intimate views of characters’ lives, (especially the women characters, and domestic situations in which they find themselves) the growth and trials of friendship, and a good deal of humor, both broad and subtle. Jewett might have fit what Hawthorne was dismissing as a “Scribbling Woman” whose domestic themes were not “universal” enough to be interesting and properly “Literary.”  Feminist scholars challenge that idea, and question the very idea of “universal” themes that dismissively leave out 50% of the population’s interests and lives. A Domestic Goddess is a “scribbling woman” who draws on themes of intimate women’s lives in a way that, when viewed with a sympathetic eye, gives dignity and grace and power to those lives. (you can guess where my sympathies lie).ßptq

“Local Color” ß ptq Regionalism or local color is a literary style that was popular in the late 19th century, particularly in magazine sketches published in The Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. It was particularly attentive to the dialect and customs of regional cultures thought to be vanishing in the face of the modern corporation. The term has come to mean any device which implies a specific locus, whether it be geographical or temporal. Widely used in the theatre and especially on television, local color is often used derisively when a device becomes a cliché. In this sense, local color can be found in Shakespeare.  Regionalism is thought to be a less negative way of describing the technique.

Jewett comments on "A White Heron" From a letter to Annie Fields, written in early 1886 . “Mr. Howells thinks that this age frowns upon the romantic, that it is no use to write romance any more; but dear me, how much of it there is left in every-day life after all. It must be the fault of the writers that such writing is dull, but what shall I do with my “White Heron” now she is written? She isn’t a very good magazine story, but I love her, and I mean to keep her for the beginning of my next book and the reason for Mrs. Whitman’s pretty cover.”

The “Romantic” as late Transcendental Jewett and Sarah Whitman (the creator of the book binding, and one of the first professional book binders in the U.S.) both shared an aesthetic sympathy for the “romantic” in “every day life.” Each of them lived most of their lives in New England and their works were influenced by the last vestiges of Emerson’s Transcendentalism, a philosophy influenced by English Romanticism espousing that contact with nature and the natural world is spiritually restorative.

"Sylvia’s heart gave a wild..."    Sylvia’s heart gave a wild beat; she knew that strange white bird, and had once stolen softly near where it stood in some bright green swamp grass, away over at the other side of the woods. There was an open place where the sunshine always seemed strangely yellow and  hot, where tall, nodding rushes grew, and her grandmother had warned her that she might sink in the soft black mud underneath and never be heard of more. Not far beyond were the salt marshes just this side the sea itself, which Sylvia wondered and dreamed much about, but never had seen, whose great voice could sometimes be heard above the noise of the woods on stormy nights.