Nature poems

Question 1

Riverdi def

Answer 1

A common motif in Romantic + Transcendalist literature + music> celebration of unfettered joys of Spring
Nature as regenerative + verdurous

Question 2

Saddest Noise- Stanzas 1-3

Answer 2

Profound ambivalence towards nature
D implies nature contains both melancholy + sweetness
Nature’s ability to evoke an awareness of the passing of time + thoughts of death
Must face mortality with the full consciousness of humanity

Question 3

Saddest Noise- Stanzas 4 and 5

Answer 3

Tonal shift
D refuses to revert to Transcendentalist naivety that nature is a refuge
BUT she refuses to fully negate nature as cancelling death would mean cancelling life> to be human is to both despair and elate

Question 4

Saddest Noise - perfect common metre

Answer 4

Belies D’s paradoxical view of nature/ consistent passing of time + subverts Riverdi tradition

Question 5

Saddest Noise- D’s intentions + intentions of her opus as a whole

Answer 5

All of D’s speakers are unafraid to consider nature, life and death in all their multi-faceted mystery, suggesting that D believes this is the only way to live authentically.

Question 6

Blazing- Form + Metre

Answer 6

Loosened ballad metre (akin to folk tales and hymns) > mythic importance

Entirely trochaic (stressed) metre

Compressed quatrains to form single octet> gives Sun an invigorating rush

Question 7

Blazing- conceit

Answer 7

The eternal sun as a protean, medieval juggler = celebration of Sun’s many guises / fleeting movement of the sun is reflective of Life’s ephemerality

Question 8

What quickens the pace in Blazing?

Answer 8

Compression of quatrains into a single octet
Ballad metre= free form
Non-finite verbs mimics the rise and fall
Uncharacteristic lack of Dickinsonian dashes

Question 9

Blazing What statement

Answer 9

Dickinson explores the captivating beauty of nature’s ephemerality through ‘Blazing’, in which she personifies the eternal Sun as a protean, opulent source of splendor.

Question 10

Narrow Fellow- what statement

Answer 10

Dickinson destabilizes the contemporary Transcendentalist view of the natural world as mankind’s ennobling refuge by compressing Nature into a deceitful and malicious bestial force.

Question 11

Narrow Fellow- form and metre

Answer 11

Varies b/w common metre + iambic trimeter, stanzas have a deceptive regularity

Question 12

Narrow Fellow- Why statement

Answer 12

Therefore, Dickinson appropriates the contemporary confidence in nature’s benevolence to destabilize its tenets founded upon a naïve ignorance of its raw reality.

Question 13

Like Rain- what statement

Answer 13

In Passage #, Dickinson exercises her poetic prerogative to express the conceptual sublime with circuitous verse through capturing the awe of a Vate poet witnessing an intense natural phenomenon.

Question 14

Like Rain- 4 essential ideas

Question 15

Like Rain- why statement

Answer 15

Ultimately, Dickinson presents a Romantic Vate speaker whose experience of a sublime encounter, engendering poetic epiphany, has rendered them spiritually ascendant.

Question 16

Like Rain- form and metre

Question 17

Narrow Fellow- Stanzas 1 and 2

Answer 17

Snake as emblemtaic of all fo Nature- commonplace + malicious
More pessimistic view of N begins to destabilise Trans. tenets that positions N as benevolent + ennobling

Question 18

Narrow Fellow- Stanzas 3,4,5

Answer 18

Boyhood encounter w snake= nature as a collectivised, malicious form
Sp. desperately ties to reinfore Trans. union w N, but fails
Stanza 5 eschews sentimentality to accept fear> all the sp. knows is N contains an undeniable malice

Question 19

Like Rain- speaker

Answer 19

Vate poet figure spontaneously enacting a process by which nature’s sublimity is captured in language

Question 20

Two Butterflies- form and metre

Answer 20

Regular metricality- creates harmony/ symbiosis b/w the butterflies and the Vate speaker.

Question 21

Two Butterflies- what statement

Answer 21

Passage # is one such poem which evidences Dickinson’s tendency to align with Romantic notions, despite her destabilization of contemporary tenets in her other works. Dickinson presents a Vate poet describing the fleeting flight of two emblematic butterflies- their movements transcending reality.

Question 22

Two Butterflies- Why statement

Answer 22

Ultimately, Dickinson explores the capacity of nature to facilitate divine inspiration through bridging the real world with the heavenly realms of poesy.

Question 23

Two Butterflies- the 2 things the conceit of the butterflies represent

Answer 23

1. Nature’s capacity to inspire the imagination
2. Poetic inspiration
   (Nature’s sublime and cyclical beauty)

Question 24

Two Butterflies- Stanzas 1 and 2

Answer 24

Explore the butteflies’ flight as transcending dimensional + onotological boundaries
Emphasises the transcendent capacities of the Vate poet’s imagination

Question 25

Stanza 3- Two Butterflies

Answer 25

The Vate poet’s imagination is disrupted by industry
Elucidates negative capability- the poet must accept that bouts of poetic inspiration are elusive + transient