A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the malaria.
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
(When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie).
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
(At distances of centuries)
From the malaria.
Malaria
Few civilizations, in all of history, have escaped the disease. Some Egyptian
mummies have signs of malaria. Hippocrates documented the distinct stages
of the illness; Alexander the Great likely died of it, leading to the unravelling of
the Greek Empire. Malaria may have stopped the armies of both Attila the Hun
and Genghis Khan.
The disease's name comes from the Italian mal'aria, meaning "bad air";
in Rome, where malaria raged for centuries, it was commonly believed
that swamp fumes produced the illness. At least four popes died of it. It may
have killed Dante, the Italian poet. George Washington suffered from malaria,
as did Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. In the late 1800s, malaria was so
bad in Washington, D.C., that one prominent physician lobbied—
unsuccessfully—to erect a gigantic wire screen around the city. A million
Union Army casualties in the U.S. Civil War are attributed to malaria, and
in the Pacific theatre of World War II casualties from the disease exceeded
those from combat. Some scientists believe that one out of every two
people who have ever lived have died of malaria.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature1/text3.html
Seam - definitions
• a joint consisting of a line formed by joining two pieces
• a wrinkle
• a stratum of ore or coal thick enough to be mined with profit
• the stitching around the circumference of a cricket ball
From Wikipedia:
Eternal flames exist in nature … as by-products of natural gas deposits
leaking through the ground. Similar phenomenon such as peat fires and
coal seam fires can also burn for decades or centuries.
stimulant (-s), n. [see stimulate, v.]
An object that quickens the energy and strength of one's heart, etc.
stimulate (-d), v. [L.]
1.To excite, rouse, or animate to action by means of a motive.
2.To prick or goad.
stimulus, n. [L. 'goad'.]
That which produces a quickening of energy and strength of action.
http://edl.byu.edu/lexicon/s/81
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the malaria.
Note the reliance on VOWEL sounds for
rhyme and accented words
– linked to ‘breathing’.
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the malaria.
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the malaria.
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
ONE sentence! – Complex – made of a principal clause, followed by
an (inverted) subordinate clause.
Suggests continual thought + a continuing existence of the word
Low modality “may” – implies doubt or uncertainty
Perfect / Close Rhyme (lie / eye)
3rd -4th lines are inverted syntactically – the meaning is obtuse
What word/s? Words are powerful
Who is the ‘maker’ of text – Dickinson, the persona, or a
third party? Is the maker a reference to a deity/ Creator?
Why is the maker ‘wrinkled’? Is the maker the composer,
wrinkled, perhaps dead?
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the malaria.
Two sentences: blunt opening statement, then an elaboration
follows
Repetition of low modality “may”
‘Slant’ or imperfect rhyme’
(breeds / centuries + despair / malaria)
Has something written (eg a letter) hurt the persona or caused her
to ‘despair’?
Has something (that the persona wrote) hurt someone else?
Whatever you write has consequences; texts have a long life
(could refer to letters as well as poems)
As the ‘maker’ of text – you are always associated with your words
Sharing ideas can be dangerous!
A writer has a responsibility to consider the
effect of their words on the community.
If words have power to last,
a writer may belong more to future generations
than they do to their own.
“To Dickinson poetry was clover… (a reference to a sprig of
clover sent to her, from the grave of her father).
… If a small flower bud had such power, she thought, how
much ore might a poem possess?. Words can destroy. “A word
dropped careless on a page” could wreak its havoc long after
its maker had died.”
Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief, Roger Lundun (p.165)
Dickinson began to see language and the word, which were
formerly part of God’s domain, as the province of the poet. The
duty of the poet was to re-create, through words, a sense of the
world as a place in which objects have an essential and almost
mythic relationship to each other.
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/dickinson/themes.html
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100201030254
AAq0Rt1
Yahoo answers!
Keep in mind that during Dickinson's time, the main form of
communication between people, aside from in person
conversation, was the written word. So Dickinson is writing
about the power of the word, even a single word, and the
impact these words can have on people. She compares a
"careless" word - one written without thought - to malaria, a
disease that spreads and ravages. She also points out that such
words live on well after they have been put to page and may
have consequences far beyond the original intent. So, it is at
some level a caution to take care in how one expresses
themselves. The fact that we are still reading Dickinson today,
well past her lifetime, serves to illustrate the power and
endurance of the written word.
Emily Dickinson’s poem “A Word dropped careless on a page” explores the
notion of the lasting effect of the written word. Ideas that are written (and
published) can last for centuries, affecting the minds and emotions of future
generations. The poet knew this from her own reading, when writers such as
Shakespeare had a powerful effect on her thinking and philosophy.
Her poem opens with a note of warning against using words lightly. The word
choice “dropped careless” has an accusatory tone, followed by the phrase
“may stimulate an eye”, which can mean to goad or provoke. (Disease was
sometimes thought to be the result of over-stimulation). This poem is rather
like a ‘cautionary tale’
The metaphor of disease is sustained, from the warning that “Infection in the
sentence breeds”, to the logical result that “we may inhale despair … from the
malaria”. The effect is to draw a parallel between a “careless” written word
and the world’s most deadly (and unstoppable) disease. If a word causes
infection, then despair is the disease, the end result. In Emily Dickinson’s
world view, words had the power to create or destroy. In the age of Darwin
and doubt, in the age of questioning the existence of a Creator, a writer had
god-like power. Ideas were indeed dangerous. The philosophical writings (eg
of Voltaire and Rousseau) in part provoked the French (and American)
Revolution. The implications of a pandemic of despair, of loss of hope, are
powerfully suggested in this poem.