Toni Morrison and Emily Dickinson use poetic description to engage the reader into the moment. Poetry is a language with different elements. Some say that poetry has to have literary elements such as metaphors and similes. Others stress rhythm and rhyme as the most important part of poetry. Personally, poetry can be about anything and have no clear definition to it. Emily Dickinson’s poem “Success is Counted Sweetest” has rhythm and rhyme, metaphors and similes. In Morrison’s novel Sula, the scene where Hannah dies also has poetic elements.
In the poem “Success is Counted Sweetest” the speaker states that “those who ne’er succeed” (2) place the highest value on success they “count” it “sweetest”. In order to understand the richness of this, the speaker states one must feel “sorest need.” (4). Dickinson states that the members of the victorious army “The purple host/Who took the flag today” (5-6) are not able to label victory as well as the defeated or dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors. People tend to desire things more intensely when they do not have them. This poem goes to show that Dickinson is pretty aware of the complicated truths of human desire. Dickinson switches roles and speaks on behalf of the dying man, who hears the victorious celebrating. To the dying man, defeat meant that he had lost everything.
This poem causes the reader to think about what success and failure are truly about. To the dying man on the field of battle, barely living would have been a priceless success. Instead, the men celebrating victory are those who won the war. Dickinson uses each verse to relate a different perspective of success and need. In the first, she introduces how those who long for something they never have achieve a greater thrill of achievement than somebody who had the same thing the deprived sought for all along. In the second verse, Dickinson discusses the victorious soldiers who acquired something apparently neither here nor there to their existence. This thought is associated in the final verse when the tragedy and yearning of the wounded is revealed.
In Morrison’s “Sula” the death of Hannah is very poetic. To begin with, Hannah takes a nap and dreams of a red bridal gown. She tells Eva about it, but Eva is too distracted by Sula’s adolescent behavior to think much about it.
Although Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had different styles of writing, they did convey the same attitude and acceptance toward death. Both Dickinson’s “712” and Whitman’s “From “Song of Myself” poems showed death was something natural that had to happen and we need to accept it at a certain point in life. Both wrote poems about it as if it were no big deal, but something peaceful. Both poets used much imagery to convey this message very clear to their audience.
The lives of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson have many similarities and differences. Here, we will focus on the similarities in their lives in order to bring to attention a correlation between Whitman's poem I Saw in Louisiana a Live-oak Growing and Dickinson's poem # 1510. Both poets wrote during the time of Romanticism, even though Whitman was Dickinson's senior by some eleven years. This however did not influence the way the writing styles of many of their poems coincided.
Emily Dickinson was a polarizing author whose love live has intrigued readers for many years. Her catalog consists of many poems and stories but the one thing included in the majority of them is love. It is documented that she was never married but yet love is a major theme in a vast amount of her poetry. Was there a person that she truly loved but never had the chance to pursue? To better understand Emily Dickinson, one must look at her personal life, her poems, and her diction.
During the time in American history known as the, several poets began to stray from the traditional methods of writing poetry. Among these poets were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. While these writer's led drastically different lifestyles and had drastically different styles of writing, the messages they presented through their writing were often surprisingly similar. Whitman's poem "Song of Myself, No.6" and Dickinson's poem "This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies" are examples of pieces which, on the surface, appear completely different, but in fact contain several similarities. Indeed, several similarities and differences can be found between these two poems.
Poetry is defined as literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm whether collectively or as a genre of literature. I chose to do all three poems by the one of our four great American poets, Emily Dickinson. The poems I have chosen to are, “Because I could not stop for death”, “Success is counted sweetest”, and “Triumph may be of several kinds”. The theme of each individual poem and its true interpreted meaning will be the focus of this paper.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
The poem, “After Great Pain”, by Emily Dickinson, is one that conveys an inner struggle of emotion and the process that a person goes through after experiencing suffering or pain. Through this poem, Dickinson utilizes physical reactions to allude to the emotional pain that can make people feel numb and empty. Included in this poem is an array of literary devices, such as oxymorons, similes, and personification. These devices help show how death and grief can be confronted, whether it be by giving into the pain or by regaining emotional strength, letting go, and moving on with life. As we work on the project, we discuss multiple aspects of the poem and how the structure and diction alludes the meaning of the poem.
states that the one who has died for his country is the one who really values the win. In “VIII”, it is stated that “mirth is the mail of anguish” which appears to contradictory. However, in Dickinson’s poem, it is used as an ironic statement to prove that people go to extreme lengths to hide their pain. Along with irony, both poems contain a paradox. In “I”, it is “success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.” In “VIII” it is “the ecstacy of death.” Both poems also repeat the same idea in a number of ways.
Although difficult and challenging, I have compared and contrasted the works of two American Poets, Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson, based on literary elements used in their writings. Their differences both in style and subject are contradictory to the fact that both Poe and Dickinson are writers/poets of the same personal nature. The use of literary elements showcase the iconic statuses of the writings created by such reserved yet fame dependent poets such as Poe and Dickinson. To an extent, their chosen elements are what create their uniqueness. Further, it establishes a uniform perception that they are similar yet different poets of the personal essence. Through their writings, readers are able to grasp the concept that they are rarely drawn to the fact their lives were perfect. Dickinson seemed to be a writer of distinct but subtle characteristics. Poe, on the other hand, was considered to be a writer filled with a dependancy on fame and fortune.
In both Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman’s works, they emphasize some differences in their writing. In Dickinson’s works she shows that her works are short and simple poems, while Whitman’s poems and often long and complex. With Dickinson showing that her works are short and simple, while Whitman brings on a more sophisticated style, it truly shows that they use their own unique style of writing. In both Whitman and Dickinson works they have been known for being such unique artist and being original, while people try so hardly to impersonate their style, but they are unable to come close to accomplishing it. Whitman wrote in ambitious proportions, while creating a style of rhythmic structure, creating stanzas and complex lines.
Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost talk about the power of nature in their poetry. Frost and Dickinson have reasonable evidence on why human beings should live life to their own agenda but, what if that person cannot stop living somebody else's dreams? How can these poems help people break away from society and become a strong, confident individual? In these poems the authors make a bold statement or display punctuation to describe the mood and tone of the poetry.
Literary Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poetry. Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American history, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice. Emily Dickinson likes to use many different forms of poetic devices and Emily's use of irony in poems is one of the reasons they stand out in American poetry. In her poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she refers to 'Death' in a good way.
Comparing Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson as Poets Often, the poets Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson try to convey the themes of the meaning of nature, or that of death and loneliness. Although they were born more than fifty years apart, their poetry is similar in many ways. Both poets talk about the power of nature, death, and loneliness. However, Dickinson and Frost are not similar in all poetic aspects.
Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are both considered as the most original poets who has boldly revolutionized the subject and style of 20th-century American poetry. Both the poets come from vastly different backgrounds but they share common inspirations but in a distinctive way. They both lived polar opposite personal lives as Walt was friendly, outgoing and influential, while Emily was very simple, shy, isolate and content. A lot of poems written by them were based on nature, death, and immortality and they focused on the importance of individualism in the society like in “I Hear America Singing” by Walt and “Much Madness is most divine Sense” by Emily. Together, they both have huge hands to shape the American poetry, and their influences