Read and annotate poems:
95 ("The Soul selects her own society)
11 ("Success is counted sweetest")
122 ("After a great pain, a formal feeling comes")
and 274 ("One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted").
Then write 2 blog posts, one each for two of those poems. For each post, do what we have practiced: identify key metaphors, key words, points of confusion, and links to other poems or books we've read. But you also need to respond to another post on that poem. This means that if you're the first to post about this poem, you catch a break.
Put your poem number at the top of each post, and post your writing in reply to a post on the same poem. This way we have separate threads for each poem.
If it looks like you spent half an hour writing your two blog posts, you get full credit. Posts are due by 8 am Tuesday.
Use this space to engage with our texts, with each other, and with your confusion.
11
ReplyDeleteThis poem discusses the idea of success. Dickinson says that the people who measure success are those who cannot achieve it. She also talks about the sacrifices that are made when someone wants to succeed. I found this similar to Kierkagaard in the sense that he cannot feel the oceanic feeling because he is someone who observes these experiences. Dickinson is similar in a sense that she talks about life and the world, but rarely left her house when she was older. She talks about someone feeling pain and dying, and I believe that is someone try to achieve success.
122
This poem most obviously talks about death. She talks about the pain before the acceptance. She talks about the world around the person who dies as if trying take in the last few earthly pleasure the speaker has left. Dickinson talks about how the formality death is quick but the feeling of acceptance is important. The insight of these feeling is important to understanding Dickinson's appreciation for the physical world.
122
DeleteThis poem is, yes, obviously about death. The nerves are compared to tombs, implying that they are calm and ceremonial. However, in the beginning of the poem, the imagery is decidedly neutral. It isn't until later in the poem that Emily begins to view death as a cold, slow, painful process. In the beginning of the poem, death seems almost welcomed. This 'formal' feeling after great pain, but not accompanied by great pain. Emily sees death as a way out of the pain. She also mentions a 'quartz contentment' in the middle. This implies that she accepts death contently, as though it were an unchangeable and beautiful part of life - like a precious stone. The 'Hour of Lead' was confusing to me. It seems to me that it is an implied 'final hour', but I don't really see how. Either way, Emily uses a collection of metaphors to explain the notion of death. The poem has an air of acceptance.
11
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza, Dickinson informs the reader that you have to want to be successful in order to be successful and you must fail in order to appreciate your success. I'm having trouble seeing where Akee's statement about her message connects to the oceanic feeling. As Akee states, Dickinson appreciates the outside world despite having rarely left her house, yet I don't consider her situation a "failure," in that she appreciates the outside world because she lives in solitude. I believe that Dickinson's message can be connected to Freud's Id. In striving to achieve a goal, your mind focuses on past failures to motivate yourself in order for the outcome to differ. Following the well-deserved success in battle, Dickinson ends the poem by saying, "The distant strains of triumph / Burst agonized and clear!" Here, the id is on full display with screams of victory, achieving a goal with past failures in mind.
274
Dickinson describes the brain as a corridor that surpasses material place. This connection reminded me of the Kierke's knight of faith in that one can encompass the material and immaterial at the same time. The poem then takes a darker drift into the metaphor of ghost trying to hunt you down in a house. I believe that the ghost represents a mirror image of yourself in coping with guilt. This metaphor embodies the statement, "you are your own worst enemy." The key words and phrases I found were "assassin, "external ghost," "bolts the door." I am confused with the beginning of the poem with the idea of a chamber and a house.
11
DeleteIn this poem Dickinson discusses how one who has never truly tasted success understands it greater than one who lives with success. I agree with adam to disagree with akee. I believe Dickinson does experience the oceanic feeling even though she stays in her house for most of her life. In her house she sees death and truly experiences the last truthful merging moments with a human. She also merges with the readers of her poems, because like Whitman she takes them on a journey where she makes one experience something she has written. THis poem talks about how people who live with everyday success take it for granted. This reminds me of Frankenstein how he truly appreciates humanity and society when watching the poeple inside the hut, yet everyone else in society takes it for granted. Key words in this poem are success, "To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need." I do not understand the purple host.
95
In this poem Emily Dickinson explains how ones soul makes the decisions for a herself and after she makes those decisions she closes off other opinions. Dickinson explains that no matter how much peer pressure even if an emperor shows up she will not let it sway her decision. This poem reminds me of Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo believes in violence as the answer for his tribe and ones his soul makes this choice he seals off all other voices. He doesnt let influences from the other tribesman or even the whitemen sway his beliefs and takes his beliefs to the grave. This poem has many key words such as door, gate, valves, stone, soul. I am confused when Dickinson says "I've known her -- from an ample nation"
11
DeleteThis poem is talking about how those you have never experienced success, feel that it is more amazing than those that expereience success frequently. The reason for this is because when someone experiences somehting less often, they find that same something more valuable. I agree with Adam because like he said i don't think this really connects to the oceanic view. I don't think Dickinson's life was a failure because of the what she was able to accomplish. I know she was in seclusion for most of her later years but that doesn't mean her life should be considered a failure. I think that success is used as a metaphor to show how in order to achieve a goal, like adam said, you remeber past failures in order to push yourself to overcome those things that were failures in the past. Sometimes those failures are the lessons that help you get through new challenges and allow you to overcome them just from what you have already learned. Like Christian, i think this poem related to Whitman because like Whitman she takes personal experiences or real life experiences and uses them to write. In this poem Succes is obviously the key word, but the purple Host confuses me too.
95
For this poem I agree with Christian. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a soul to portray how the soul, in the first stanza chooses her own path. When she says, "Then -- shuts the door --" this means that she closes the door to other options because this is her decision. The second stanza uses "Unmoved" as an important word because this shows that the Soul has no emotion or doesn't care about what else is out there. Her decision is made and that is it. In the last stanza, the narrator says she knew the soul and the Soul needed to choose, which she did, but after she chose, her decision was set in stone. The things that confused me were the things that she was "unmoved" by.
11
DeleteThis poem talks about how succession is good to those who don't experience success often. I agree with coco when she says that when someone experiences something less often, they find that same thing more valuable to them. It makes sense that way. They also talk about how no one really knows what the feeling or definition of victory is until they are defeated and die. Although I do believe this is conneceted to the oceanic view because when they are defeated, they then realize the world outside of theirs and see it in a bigger perspective.
95
In this poem, it talks about how the "soul" or one chooses who he/she wants to be and they shut off everything else that tells them they cannot. I think Christian beings up an interesting point when he says in Things Fall Apart that Okonkwo believes in violence as the answer and he shuts off all other voices that tell him different. I am little confused when Dickinson uses the word "Unmoved" twice and the importance of this word. I'm also confused as to what "Choose One" means at the end of poem.
95
DeleteThis poem is about the soul and the idea that the sould only allows few people to get close to it. Dickinson says that the soul selects her own society which is the group of people that the soul allows itself to get close to, and then for the rest of the people in the world, it basically shuts them out. Some interesting words i found were "society," "divine Majority," "Chariots," and "from an ample nation." A metaphor that was interesting to me was the comparison between the soul and a stone. SOmething that confused me was the idea of the "emperor be kneeling." I think that allie makes a good point in her interpretation of the poem. She said that it is about the sould choosing who he/she wants to be, and i think that this poem could also be interpreted that way if you look at it differently than I did.
11
I think that the meaning of this poem is the idea that people who do not have much appreciate things more than those who have a lot. I think "sweetest" means that these people are the ones who really appreciate success when that have it in life. Some words that stood out to me were "nector," "defeated," "forbidden ear," and "agonized." However, the idea of the forbidden ear confuses me and I don't really understand what that means. The poem talks about how the "purple Hosts" don't understand what victory is even though they saw victory. These people don't understand the meaning of victory as well as a dying man who has little success in his life does. I agree with allie when she says that no one knows the feeling of victory until they are defeated and die and that this whole idea is connected to the oceanic view. I thought that was an interesting point because it is true that when you are defeated, you realize more of the world around you in many cases.
I think we were supposed to do one poem per post and reply to people who did the same poem... Either way, here's
ReplyDelete274
Emily starts off the poem by basically saying that it is very possible for us to be haunted.
She tells us that the brain is not safe from haunting, and neither is the body. She says that it is easier to confront a ghost at midnight, than to confront ourselves in our own brains. We are unarmed when it comes to encountering ourselves, whereas we are armed against the outside world. We hide behind ourselves, but we don't consider that the real danger, or 'assassin', lies inside our very heads. The last stanza drives the point further by saying that we arm our bodies in order to keep harm out, but that the real harm may be within us after all. A 'superior spectre' possibly.
11:
DeleteTo follow up on Coco's post, I also think she's talking about how success is much more valuable to those who don't achieve it frequently when it says "Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed". Like sports teams, a championship would be much more valuable to a terrible team then a team with a dynasty like the Yankees. I also think the phrase "Can tell the definition So clear of victory" is important to this poem as it's saying that that the "purple hosts" are able to tell when they reach success. Having devoted an entire stanza to the "purple hosts", they must be fairly important people in their society.
95:
By saying that "The Soul selects her own Society" I can relate it to the poem about the narrow walls protecting the heart. I can also see a lot of connection to Whitman. The soul isn't allowing one to merge with the world. The soul selects her friend group, her surroundings, etc. then shuts out the rest of the world. It then goes on to saying "To her divine Majority Present no more". Is it stating that she's lost everything? Everything she has known and opened up to is now gone? As Coco stated, the word "unmoved" is very significant to the meaning of the poem. It's stating how it has no emotion and empathy for others.