Preparing for Our Next Study Day

Today we focused on Emily Dickinson's poetry, looking at it, listening to it, discussing her place in literature, and gossiping about her a little.  We listened to Aaron Copland's setting of her poem "Nature the gentlest mother": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcZayQ1pZTo  If you would like to see the words of that poem, here it is:  http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/115/the-poems-of-emily-dickinson-series-two/4422/nature-poem-1-mother-nature/  We also listened to poet Robert Pinsky read "Because I could not stop for Death": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479  as well as the slam poets reading "My Life had stood--a loaded Gun": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yXlA_A34g

Here is our prose version of "Because I could not stop for Death":

Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves And immortality.  We slowly drove. He knew no haste, and I had put away my labor and my leisure too for his civility . We passed the school, where children strove at recess in the ring .  We passed the fields of gazing grain.  We passed the setting sun, or rather  he passed us. The dews drew quivering and chill. For only gossamer, my gown, my tippet, only tulle. We paused before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground.  The roof was scarcely visible, the cornice in the ground. Since then 'tis centuries, and yet feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads were toward eternity.

Try doing this with any of the other poems we looked at!  What did you learn about the poem?  What did you discover when you went back to look at the original version of the poem?  

Choose a poem and read it aloud.  What did you learn about it?  Why?  How is the oral version different from the reading version?  How is it similar?

Here are a few more questions about Dickinson and her poetry.  Below is a picture of an envelope poem.  Not every poem was written down in this manner, but many were:

Here is an article about these envelope poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70065/studies-in-scale

What does this article add to your understanding of Emily Dickinson's poetry?  of poetry and literature in general?  Consider the conditions of writing as well as a woman's life in the 1800s.

How does information about Emily Dickinson's life help you to read her poetry?  How does it get in your way?  (Here is the Poetry Foundation's biography: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-dickinson  I reviewed two recent biographies of the poet here: http://en202.blogspot.com/2010/06/white-heat-friendship-of-emily.html
http://en202.blogspot.com/2010/06/lives-like-loaded-guns.html)

Discuss the relationship between gun and master in "My Life had stood--a loaded Gun."

Discuss the relationship between woman and man in "My Life..."

Why is Emily Dickinson still worth reading in 2018?  Which insights does she have for us today?

Do some research on the 1800s.  How does Emily Dickinson's poetry reflect the world that she lived in?

Why might a poet want to make the everyday strange?

How should a poet communicate with his/her readers?

Compare two of Emily Dickinson's poems.  How does reading each alongside the other help you to understand them more?

Compare one of Emily Dickinson's poems to a poem by Shakespeare, Bishop, Whitman, or Hughes.  What does the comparison tell you about the poems?  What does it tell you about poetry in general?

On to our next study day!  We will discuss poems by Langston Hughes on Monday.  I will also add this bop poem for you: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/rambling

To learn more about the bop poem, see this link: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/bop-poetic-form