Poetry flashcards
1
Q
FUNERAL
CONTOUR 1 (1/2)
- “I felt a Funeral - in my Brain”
abrupt 1st line
diction - “Mourners” + “tread” + “to and fro”
capitalisation + metaphor
verb conn
monosyllables - “beating - beating” + “a service - like a Drum”
epizeuxis + plosive allit - “Boots of Lead” + “creak across my soul”
polysyndeton + emjambment
imagery
onomatopoeia
A
- abruptness + comb tactile ‘feel’ + visceral ‘Brain’ → mental precarity = immediate but also depersonalised (F = felt rather than seen dir)
- Mourners cap = power / they rep thoughts + emo tormenting sp / these thoughts ‘tread’ incessantly + heavy (‘to and fro’ → concrete rep of repetitive heavy steps) across sp’s brain
- epizeuxis + plosive ‘beat’ → sense that mind assailed X by clear words of service but by meaningless sounds ‘like a drum’ → t/f ED’s depiction of alienation of sp feels protomodern
- poly + enjamb → escalation sp’s perturbation / heavy ‘boots of lead’ create onomat ‘creak’ across soul (unsettling sense tremor thru psyche)
2
Q
FUNERAL
CONTOUR 1 (2/2)
- “Space - began to toll” + “As all the heavens were a Bell”
liquid consonance
simile - “Being but an ear”
metaphor
synecdoche - ‘wrecked’ + ‘some strange race’
adj
assonance - ‘I and silence’
assonance
A
- plangent sound of bell rep sp’s anguish + liquid consonance (‘all’ + ‘bell’) sees the bell’s toll stretch out timelessly → sp’s anguish projected onto world beyond (personal melancholy becomes univ despair)
- reduction to single bio entity = loss of psych cohesion/boundary bw sp’s mind + outside world
- sp feels ‘wrecked’ w/in ineffable solitude - X longer themself → sp becomes another species to them (acc by assonance ‘strange race’)
- w/in this solitude sp become silence (emptiness) itself (acc by assonance ‘I’ + ‘silence’)
→ foreshadows hope for mental clarity??
3
Q
FUNERAL
CONTOUR 2
- ‘A Plank in Reason Broke’ + ‘Hit a world at/Every plunge’
metaphor
diction - ‘finished knowing - then -‘
slant rhyme + anti-closural/indeterminate dash
A
- 2 poss readings - breakage plank = final loss sanity OR moment of lib (a ‘break’ thru) bc ‘hit a world at every plunge’ → sp exp new sequence of perception OR brain violently destroying them
→ T/f ED argue must ‘break’ w/ standard ways of knowing to achieve freedom/revelation in senseless world (protomodern) - 2 poss readings - ‘finished knowing’ = loss of sanity OR slant rhyme + dashes destab reg iambic rhythm → X mental disintegration but sp breaking free from metrical/psych convention
→ t/f ED celebrate sp surviving suffering bc discover new/unusual truth (a truth told ‘slant’)
4
Q
BLANK
STANZA 1
- “From Blank to Blank —A Threadless Way”
Allusion + ‘blanks’ = conceit
Repetition + split tetrameter line slant rhyme - “I pushed Mechanic feet —”
Metaphor
Verb connotations - “To stop —or perish —or advance —/Alike indifferent —”
Dashes
parallelism
A
- →Theseus’ labyrinth but a maze of ‘blanks’ → conceit labyrinth rep meaninglessness of speaker’s psych. state
→ accen. by rep ‘blank’ + severing tetrameter line harnesses empty space at end of line to imply emptiness
→‘threadless’ implies Sisyphean meandering / Slant rhymes defer acoustic expectation: sense of ends nearly arrived at but never realized.
→→t/f speaker= alienated (protomodern) - →Metaphor = despairing mental state
→moving mechanically through life/going through motions in detached fashion
→Verb ‘pushed’ = heaviness often seen poems re. despair (‘heft’ in Slant+ ‘boots of lead’ in Funeral)→sense of ‘pushing’ own feet = detachment from own body/experience - →dashes rep speaker’s halting steps as they consider options (to stop, or to die, or to keep going) but polysyndeton + parallelism →numbing equivalence of each option (fatalism)
→By end S1 speaker appears to suffer from a form of despair rooted in a feeling of meaninglessness which engenders a fatalistic attitude towards their existence
5
Q
BLANK
STANZA 2
- “If end I gained/It ends beyond”
Allusion
Plosive /d/ consonance - “Indefinite disclosed”
Plosive /d/ consonance
paradox - “I shut my eyes —and groped as well/’Twas lighter —to be Blind —”
Paradox
TURN
A
- L6+7 refer back allus. labyrinth: unlike Theseus, who escapes, speaker reaches ‘end’ points, only for these 2 be deferred ‘beyond’
→sense inescapable recursion w/in own psych. suffering. cons. plosive /d/
→sense entrapment - ‘disclosed’: /d/ appears in initial and terminal position: again, entrapment
- paradox: ‘indefinite’ = vague, while ‘disclosed’= something made clear ∴ only thing ‘clear’ to speaker = lack of clarity itself - In despair. sp closes eyes, as if ‘blindness’ = alleviate burdensome (‘lighter’) than active contemplation of their own suffering + meaninglessness in scheme universeHOWEVER: final couplet also contains turn typical of ED’s poem about despair / speaker seems to suggest that going by ‘feel’ rather than ‘sight’ may thread a path towards something ‘lighter,’ or more illuminated
6
Q
SLANT
STANZA 1 - The first part of the PAbasically suggests that the speaker is depressed by nature’s reminder of mortality.It also covers what the speaker suggests despair feels like, and suggests Dickinson’s alienation from broader structures.
- “certain Slant of light /Winter Afternoons”
Connotations
metaphorical setting - “oppresses, like the Heft/Of Cathedral Tunes –”
Ponderous diction
Trochaic pulse - “internal difference/Where the Meanings, are /–No scar”
Sharp /i/ assonance
Ungrammatical comma
imagery
A
- →connot‘slant’ = obscurity of vision (X clarity) immediately evokes speaker’s psych. discomfort
→setting ‘winter afternoons’ = the light may be slanted b/c it is retreating (day is dying) ∴speaker senses death in nature - →speaker’s intuition of death in nature triggers despair which ‘oppresses’ with its ‘heft’ / light is not airy but heavy
→ED accentuates weight of speaker’s misery by referring to ‘Cath. Tunes’ which should bring comfort but instead intensify tactile ‘heft’ sp’sdespair
→also accen. by trochaic pulse (note sim. diction + trochaic pulse in Funeral–treading/treading) - →assonance evokes despair’s painful sharpness, cutting through and affecting us @core ‘where the meanings, are’ / ungrammatical comma implies disturbance @ heart of identity.
→image of ‘no scar’ →evokes isolating invisibility + alienation caused by despair
7
Q
SLANT
STANZA 2 - The second part of the analysis essentially covers the idea that God is cruel for giving us –all of humanity –this despair and making us die too. However, Dickinson may also suggest that a common experience of vulnerability may be a basis for human connection.
- ‘Heavenly Hurt it gives us’+ ‘Imperial Affliction.’
Oxymoron + diction of regality
Incl ‘us’ - ‘shadows -hold their breath -’
personification - ‘we’ and ‘us’
Incl lang
A
- →God sends desp. Through nature to all humanity (‘us’) / oxy + dictevokes speaker’s ambiv. re powerful ‘imperial’ God thought to be ‘heavenly’ but who deliberately ‘hurts’ humankind from distance / speaker seems to lament cruelty of a God who creates humanity only to make it suffer + die
- →shadows hold breath b/c as light fades towards its death, they too will die ∴ poem ends on note of death with which it began
- →h/winclusive pronouns in poem remind readers human pain + mortality = shared fate, making ED’s poetry an occasion for human connection even in midst of suffering
8
Q
NOISE
CONTOUR 1
- No quote
Perfect common metre - ‘The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,/The maddest noise that grows, -‘birds’ + ‘in the spring’
Anaphoric superlative adjectives
Repetition + diction - ‘At night’s delicious close.’
Diction + metaphor
Overall S1 destabilises the *riverdi tradition - ‘March and April line’ + ‘magical frontier’ + ‘summer hesitates’
diction
personification
A
- →imbues poem w. sense pleasant fluidity springtime, but (as in Frost) meter belies speaker’s more complex view of N + human life
- →rush intense but paradoxical reactions to ‘noises’ of env. (sweet also threatening.)
→connotes incomprehensible even abrasive sound w/in environ. ∴surprising to discover beautiful but unnerving ‘noise’ = ‘birds’ ‘in the spring.’ - →sound of birds announces spring at ‘close’ of ‘night’ (ie winter); their sound = unnerving but also ‘delicious’ (sensorially delightful)
Overall, ED’s unnerving portrayal spring subverts riverdi tradition which celebrates regreening of the earth (for ED, spring is both ‘sad’ and ‘sweet’) - →delightful seasonal movement from spring to summer evinced by diction of ‘March + April line’ + ‘magical frontier.’
→summer personified ‘hesitating’ beyond ‘magical frontier.’ ∴summer= rapturous (‘heavenly’) but also melancholic, b/c its arrival involves time passing/its own death
9
Q
NOISE
CONTOUR 1
- ‘It makes us think of all the dead’
Sharp shift to morbid, mournful tone (continues to subvert riverdi) - ‘What we had and what we now deplore’
Tone of world-weariness
Past and present tense - ‘We almost wish those siren throats would go and sing no more’
/o/ assonance
Allusion
qualifier
A
- →rather than birdsong →full-throated romantic riverdi, awareness N’s sweetness triggers thoughts of death & life’s ephemerality ∴sp grieves ‘all the dead’
- →past tense ruefully reflects on sweet times + persons gone (‘what we had’) then present tense 2 lament travails of quotidian (‘what we now deplore’) including prospect of certain death ∴birdsong stimulated contemplation all of life’s sadness + sweetness
- →mournful assonance reveals spX longer tolerate birdsong whose beauty must end, ‘almost wish[ing] those siren throats would go and sing no more.’
→birdsong = like Homeric sirens’ song conflates beauty + death
→birdsong like siren song b/c its maddening aural beauty can break the ‘human heart as quickly as a spear’
→H/w the qualifier ‘almost’ means sp. resists temptation to turn away from/deny N’s bittersweet beauty.
10
Q
NARROW FELLOW
C1
- snake X named
- ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass/His notice sudden is –’
Alteration of idiom
Connotations
Concealed sibilance - ‘The Grass divides as with a Comb –/A spotted shaft is seen –’
Simile
Fronting of sibilance
Oblique metaphor / phallic imagery
A
- →exaggerates menace of snake (link w. Hope, bird X named) never named as bird) (→D’sonenraged w. title ‘the snake’ when pub. Springfield Republican)
- →alters idiomatic ‘snake in the grass’ 2 include both affability (‘fellow’) w. connot. constriction (‘narrow’) S’s (& ∴ N’s) duplicity exagg. by sibilance concealed w/in or @ end words,like S concealed in plain sight, until moment it comes into view
- Vivid simile →tension →S = malicious + beyond sight
→prosaic ‘comb’ (like ‘fellow’) implies s’thingfamiliar
When S seen, it’s a ‘spotted shaft’ = another oblique desc. snake; sense that although S in full view it’s still concealed **phallic connotations (hostility in N often masculinized, as in Frost)
∴by rep. snake this way, D’soncharac. N = both commonplace + threatening, destabilizing rom. + trans tenets positioning N. as refuge / N becomes a realm of hidden terrors (hinge)
11
Q
NARROW FELLOW
C2 (1/2)
- Switch to tighter iambic trimester to relate boyhood encounter
- ‘But when a Boy, and Barefoot -/I more than once at Noon’
Plosive alliteration
imagery - ‘Have passed, I thought, a Whip Lash/Unbraiding in the Sun’
Bracketing commas - ‘When stooping to secure it/It wrinkled, and was gone -‘
Imagery of the snake’s departure →stanzaic break (stanza previously compressed into octet)
A
- →trimeter = tighter + reflects the speaker’s breathless terror as they recount their memory
- →+ plosive allit + imagery = sp’s percussive heartbeat as they recall ‘barefoot’ vuln. 2 concealed danger →destab. trans. tenets man’s easy communion w. nature; on the contrary, humans vuln @ place where human body meets ground
- →Bracketing commas ‘I thought’ →retrospective voice draw attn. 2 distinction btw. N’s benign appearance + malevolent reality, like S disguised ‘at noon’ in plain sight
- As S ‘wrinkles’ and is gone, departure →stanzaic break / tension (previously compressed into octet) finally dissipates; ∴ longest lexical unit takes place in proximity w. S itself, w. stanza refusing a break or relaxation until S moves away, much like encounter itself
12
Q
NARROW FELLOW
C2 (2/2)
- ‘Nature’s PeopleI feel for them a transport/Of Cordiality -‘
Return to present
diction - ‘But never met this Fellow/Without a tighter breathing/And Zero at the Bone -‘
Conjunction
Diction
imagery
A
- →return to present / after traumatic memory S reaffirms the ‘cordiality’ he feels w. other animals (‘Nature’s People’); attempt 2 reassure N can still function 4 him (as it did 4 other Transcendentalists) as a realm of benevolent “transport”
- →‘But’ dismisses self-persuasion of previous stanza as naive
recollection of S’s (+ N’s) hidden dangers brings only ‘tighter breathing’ (evoking perhaps, the act of serpentine constriction) + ‘Zero at the Bone,’ an embodied sense of annihilation (‘zero.’)
13
Q
BLAZING
CONTOUR 1 (1/2)
- No quote
compressed lines into single octet stanza + eschew characteristic dashes - “Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple”
colour symbolism
conn of blazing
foreshadowing - “Leaping Like Leopards to the Sky”
metaphor
liquid allit
cont verbs in present prog tense
A
- path of sun exp. as invigorating, almost acrobatic rush
- L1’s colour symb’sm praises nature’s regality while evoking sun’s path from dawn to dusk
- verb phrase ‘blazing in gold’ = dawn is replete w. refulgence
- ‘quenching in purple’ = foreshadows sun’s (+ humanity’s) inevitable death but evokes satis. of light’s death (connot. ‘quenching’)
- L1’s colour symb’sm praises nature’s regality while evoking sun’s path from dawn to dusk
- B/c sun = juggler who app. many guises, L2 brings new metaphor of dawn: sun = oriental leopard, ‘leaping’ from the East
- Liquid allit. accen. sun’s feline gracefulness streaking across the sky
- continuation of verbs in present progressive tense →endows sun’s path w. startling immediacy + intensity
- B/c sun = juggler who app. many guises, L2 brings new metaphor of dawn: sun = oriental leopard, ‘leaping’ from the East
14
Q
BLAZING
CONTOUR 1 (2/2)
- “old Horizon/Laying her spotted Face to die”
metaphor - “Stooping as Low as the Otter’s Window”
connotations
imagery - “Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn”
verb connotations - “Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow/And the Juggler of Day is gone”
conceit is revealed
A
- As sun begins descent towards its ‘death’ @ Western ‘horizon’, appears in still another guise: now person. As old woman ‘laying her spotted space to die.’
- Sun’s path now nearing sunset = clearly conflated w. human mortality as it ‘stoops’ in old age ‘as low as the otter’s window:’ image evokes twilight creeping low enough across river to peek at otter’s homes.
- From here sun only ‘touch’ roof + ‘tint’ barn →almost blessing environ. w. crepuscular light.
- Sun juggler’s greatest magical trick = only becomes visible as illusionist in final lines: ‘kisses her bonnet’ to thank audience b4 ‘the juggler of Day is gone.’
15
Q
LIKE RAIN
CONTOUR 1
- “Like Rain it sounded till it curved”
simile
verbs - “and then I knew ‘twas Wind “
simple dict
pun
A
- →confusion re. what ‘it’ is being described.
→Ostensibly ‘it’ = rain, but aural verb ‘sounded’ + kinetic verb ‘curved’ →sense of strange + elusive referent. - →L2 rain = ‘wind,’ but simple diction contains pun: ‘wind’ = Pentecostal wind of God’s holy spirit incarnated in nature or ‘wind’ = processes of poetic genius ‘winding’ sublime experience into slanted. lang. of dazzling beauty.
= both the Pent’talwind of God’s majesty which the poet-vatehears whistling alliteratively (‘walked as wet as any wave’)
= but also the poetic genius which ‘winds’ sublime experiences into lang.
