Sunrise in Amherst
The Features of
Emily Dickinson’s poetry
Speaker:吴倩
Here’s a short list of indicating frequency of
Emily Dickinson’s used favorite words in her
1775 poems:
170:
141:
130:
125:
124:
121:
sun
death, face
god, time
soul
heart
night
106:
102:
94:
88:
86:
82:
77:
love
bird
die
eyes
bee, home
light
sky
Other Subjects
Death and
Immortality
Nature
Subject matters
Love
Religion
Success and
Failure
Unity of
Goodness, Truth
and Beauty
•Death and immortality are
the center of Dickinson’s
poems (one third).
•She expects to understand
the meaning of life by
understanding the meaning
of death.
•“I Heard a Fly buzz—
when I died—”
•“Because I could not
stop for Death”
•“My life closed twice
before its close”
I heard a Fly buzz– when I died—
I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
The Stillness in the Room
What portion of me be
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Assignable—and then it was
Between the Heaves of Storm—
There interposed a Fly—
The Eyes around– had wrung them dry— With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
And breaths were gathering firm
Between the light—and me—
For that last Onset—when the King
And then the Windows failed—and then
Be witnessed—in the Room—
I could not see to see—
She was skeptical and
ambivalent about the possibility
of achieving immortality.
Dickinson’s many
friends died before
her, and the fact
that death seemed
to occur often in
the Amherst of the
time added to her
gloomy meditation.
“My life closed
twice before its
close” portrays the
poet as ever-ready
for the assault of
death.
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice fell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Nature
• Natural phenomena, changes of seasons, heavenly
bodies, animals, birds and insects, flowers of various
kinds—all these and many other subjects related to
nature find their way into her poetry.
• The mixed feelings of joy and grief at the coming of
spring and autumn, the sense of momentary
transitoriness(短暂，瞬间) and the power and
majesty of summer storm.
• In the meantime the cold indifference of nature is
also revealed in her poems.
Dickinson was original. The way she wrote about
love is a good case in point.
“Mine—by the Right of the White Election”
expresses a passionate and eternal love in an elegiac
(悲伤的)tone.
“Wild Nights—Wild Nights”, Love is expressed in an
unabashed manner with evident erotic image.
Charles Wadsworth
•Dickinson holds that beauty, truth and
goodness are ultimately one.
•John Keats—
“beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”
•“I died for Beauty—but was scarce”
•Strong influence of Calvinism on her thought
(pessimism and tragic tone of her poems);
•exploring human’s inner world (psychology
description in her poems);
•Her poems abounds in telling original images;
•Good at catching the charm of something
but dropping the thing itself;
•Severe economy of expression;
•Brief, direct and plain language
Here are two versions of one stanza of one of her poems.
The first is unedited; the second has been “corrected.”
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—
We passed the school where children played
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Characteristics of Poetic Forms
•
•
•
•
•
Overuse of capitalization & dashes(破折号);
The use of deletions;
Absence of connective words;
Irregular rhymes;
Wrenched grammar & syntax;
e.g. "A Wonderful—to
Feel the Sun."
Rhetorical Devices
Oxymoron （矛盾修饰法）
Synesthesia (联觉）
Alliteration(头韵)，vowel rhyme（叠韵）
Metaphor
Death is a Dialogue between
Personification
The Spirit and the Dust.
“Dissolve” says Death—The Spirit “Sir
I have another Trust”—
Capitalization of Her Poems
• German, a language Dickinson knew, typically
capitalizes nouns.
• Capitalized words gives additional emphasis.
• Some critics (Habegger) believe that her use is
at times idiosyncratic and more random than
meaningful, since in some instances a word is
capitalized in one of Dickinson's handwritten
copies of a poem but not in another of her
copies.
The Use of Dashes
•marks to guide readers on how the passage
should be read or phrased;
•To makes readers ponder words and phrases;
•To cause reflection and intensity;
•To slow reader or call attention.
I Like to See It Lap the Miles
I like to see it lap the Miles—
To fit it’s sides
And lick the Valleys up—
And crawl between
And stop to feed itself at tanks—
Complainig all the while
And then—prodigious step
In horrid—hooting stanza—
Then—chase itself down Hill—
Around a Pile of Mountains—
And neigh like Boanerges—
And supercilious peer
Then—prompter than a Star
In Shanties—by the sides of Roads—
Stop—docile and omnipotent
And then a Quarry pare
At it’s own stable door—
She tells about the railway is as impressive as her striking
image of a galloping horse intended as a symbol both of the
railroad and developing America.