Emily Dickinson’s Conventions and Poems: A Study
Emily Dickinson Conventions
Quatrains
4 line stanzas that echo the simple rhymes of church hymns
Slant Rhymes
Words that do not exactly rhyme
Inventive punctuation and sentence structure
Highlight important words and to break up the rhythm of her poems
Unconventional figurative language
Similes, metaphors, and personification
Irregular capitalization and inverted syntax
Emphasize important words
a mixture of iambic tetrameter and trimeter. Her rhyming also followed, for the most part, that of the ballad stanza (ABCB)
Her verse is distinguished by its epigrammatic compression, haunting personal voice, enigmatic brilliance, and lack or high polish.
Because I could not stop for Death- (narrative image): Dickinson explores the idea of perpetual life. In this poem there is life after death, which offers an explanation as to why the speaker’s so calm about everything. Death’s not the end, just one step closer to eternity.
Success is counted sweetest: Only failures fully understand the meaning of success.
Much Madness is divinest Sense: criticizes society’s inability to accept rebellion, arguing that the majority is the side that should in fact be considered ‘mad.’
My Life closed twice before its close-: Whether her heart was broken by a lover, or someone close to her has passed away doesn’t seem to matter we only know that she feels a void in her life that she equates to her own death. // uses heartbreak as a metaphor for death. The title of the poem, is a paradox she attributes two different meanings to the word close. Here, she is using the term “close” to represent both heartbreak and death at the same time.
The Soul selects her own society: presents the individual as absolute and the right of the individual as unchallengeable. In this poem, the soul’s identity is assured.
I heard a Fly buzz- when I died-: exploration of the afterlife leads her to believe that death can potentially be a disappointment instead of something to lean toward
My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun-: She takes her identity from a man. She is opposing the fact that being a woman entails being passive and defenseless, but at the same time she is saying that her aggressive character appeared only after a man identified her.
Romanticism
- Realism: Newspaper + Photography
- Psychological Realism: Science + Technology (Behavioral= Dr. Pavior; Natural= Darwin (natural selection); Motivational= Dr. Freud)
- Impressionism: Recording emotional reaction incorporating via highly sensory description