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
Speaker/Addressee
Repetition/Verbs/Tense
Rhetorical
Devices
Images
Language/Three Syllable words