EMILY DICKINSON
Enlightened and modern; yet a recluse
BACKGROUND
Many great writers were active people who had strange experiences,
traveled
widely, and knew a lot of people. Do you think a woman who just
stayed home,
hardly ever saw anyone, and only published seven poems during her
lifetime could be
a great poet?
EMILY DICKINSON WAS.
Emily Dickinson was. In fact, she is considered one of the greatest
poets of the nineteenth century. She is a rather unusual person. She
seldom left her
house, she never married, and she always dressed in white. But she wrote
wonderful
poems about nature, love, life, and death. Her poems are short and not
hard to read,
but they have deep meanings.
IF I CAN STOP ONE HEART
FROM BREAKING
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
I’M NOBODY! WHO ARE
YOU?
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us? Don’t tell.
They’d advertise, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public-like a frog.
To tell one’s name the livelong-- June
To an admiring bog!
HOPE IS THE THING WITH
FEATHERS
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird.
That kept so many warm
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity.
INTRODUCTION
"Poetry is the human soul entire,
squeezed like a lemon or a lime,
drop by drop,
into atomic words."
--Langston Hughes
OTHER POETS
Usually poets try to do more than just explain an idea or describe a scene. They
write without the usual rules for writing sentences and don't care about logical order
like in an essay. They often try to emphasize images. They use symbolism to get us
to understand what they have to say. In some ways they reconstruct the world to
make us see things in a different way, feel in a certain manner.
ANSWER THESE
QUESTIONS
 1. Do you know who she is?
 2. Where and when was she born?
 3. What was her life like?
 4. What are the main themes in her poetry?
 5. Why is she so important in American literature?
PICTURE OF EMILY
DICKINSON
LET’S ANALYZE THE
POEMS
 Line #
Rhyming Words
Rhyme Pattern
IF I COULD STOP ONE
HEART FROM BREAKING
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
IF I COULD STOP ONE
HEART FROM BREAKING
 1. Who is the speaker?
 2. How does the writer show her love to
 the weak?
 3. How does Emily think of the world around her?
 What is the main theme of the poetry?
ANALYSIS
Who is the
speaker?
Why does the
speaker use such a
disparate
comparison?
How does she
think of the world
around her?
What is the theme
of this poem?
PAIR ACTIVITY
Theme
Rhetorical
Devices
Speaker/Addressee
Images
Repetition/Verbs/Tense
Language/Three Syllable
words