The Emily Dickinson Fan Club

[Beren3000]

I have checked and there are no threads on that remarkable poet. So I thought I'd start this one.
Basically, it's meant to be a discussion thread where fans of Miss Dickinson can discuss a particularly difficult or ambiguous poem or just share their thoughts about an interesting one. I have been reading a collection of her poems recently and I found a lot of interesting stuff and I'll (soon) start the discussion off with one of her poems. Meanwhile, anyone is welcome to participate.
Any Emily Dickinson readers out there?

[Rían]

Where would you recommend I start? I've never read anything of hers, and I like your taste in poetry! (we both loved Paradise Lost)

[Beren3000]

You wouldn't necessarily like Emily D. if you liked PL. They fall under different categories. If you want to start with some Dickinson poetry, however, I'd recommend The Wordsworth Poetry Library book (the one I'm reading right now) called The Works of Emily Dickinson It has a biography and an intro. Even though it doesn't have all of her poems, it's still a good read.
As an appetizer, here's one of her famous poems:

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense, the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent and you're sane.
Demur and you're straightaway dangerous
And handled with a chain.

The punctuation is probably wrong. Emily Dickinson was known for her idiosyncratic punctuation and her wild paradoxes.

[Fat middle]

I like very much Dickinson's poetry. It is often very sad and she deals frequently with the topic of death, but I find it somehow heart-strengthening

[Fat middle]

BTW, the second poem in your sig is the one quoted in Seabiscuit, doesn't it?

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Fat middle

BTW, the second poem in your sig is the one quoted in Seabiscuit, doesn't it?

I wouldn't know. I've neither read the book nor watched the movie.

Originally Posted by Fat middle

I like very much Dickinson's poetry.

So how about sharing one or two of your faves with us?

[Beren3000]

To anyone who's interseted, one of my favorite poems by Dickinson is:

To learn the transport by the pain
As blind men learn the sun.
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run.

To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue beloved air.

This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates,
Whose voices trained below,

Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard.

[Fat middle]

Very beatiful

I have not my Dickinson's book at hand, but one I like very much is that begins:

"Through what transports of patience
I reached the stolid bliss
to breathe my blank without thee
atest me this and this.

By that bleak exultation
I won as near as this
thy privilege of dying
Abreviate me this..."

Hey, that was out of memory. I'll check it later

[Lady Ravyn]

i love emily dickinson; she's the author who got me really into poetry and she's still in my top three fav poets
right now i have this one as my desktop on my comp:

Troubled About Many Things

How Many times these low feet staggered,
Only the soldered mouth can tell;
Try! Can you stir the awful rivet?
Try! Can you lift the hasps of steel?

Stroke the cool forehead, hot so often,
Lift, if you can, the listless hair;
Handle the adamantine fingers
Never a thimble more shall wear.

Buzz the dull flies on the chamber window;
Brave shines the sun through the freckled pane;
Fearless the cobweb swings from the ceiling-
Indolent housewife, in daisics lain!

[Beren3000]

Here's one of the poems I find hard to understand:

Saturday Afternoon

From all the jails the boys and girls
Ecstatically leap,-
Beloved, only afternoon
That prison doesn't keep.

They storm the earth and stun the air,
A mob of solid bliss.
Alas! That frowns could lie in wait
For such a foe as this!

Would somebody like to try their hands at interpreting it?

[Nurvingiel]

I love Emily Dickinson! I can't believe I haven't posted here yet. My favourite poem is "Because I Could Not Stop for Death".

I'll try a hand at interpreting the poem. I think it's about how kids have to go to school all the weekday afternoons, and church on Sunday. Saturday is the only time they have for themselves. I understand the second stanza a bit less though. This line: "Alas! That frowns could lie in wait" stumps me.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I love Emily Dickinson! I can't believe I haven't posted here yet. My favourite poem is "Because I Could Not Stop for Death".

That's a great poem, too! We studied it in English last year.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I'll try a hand at interpreting the poem. I think it's about how kids have to go to school all the weekday afternoons, and church on Sunday. Saturday is the only time they have for themselves. I understand the second stanza a bit less though. This line: "Alas! That frowns could lie in wait" stumps me.

I think the poem is too loaded with symbolism for such a straightforward interpretation. My own thought is that it's about how Death is a liberation of "all the jails" of life. In this case the line "that frowns could lie in wait for such a foe as this" would make sense. She's regretting that people can look at death in a negative way while it's actually freeing them. Also, "only afternoon that prison doesn't keep" would make sense because the prison of life could not keep the afternoon because the afternoon is the "death" of the day, if you will. Too farfetched?

[sun-star]

According to my English teacher, every Dickinson poem is about Death, so I'm sure you're close I don't have any better ideas I'm afraid.

I'm applying to join the fan club. I love Dickinson's poetry, especially this one:

Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence,—
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

[Beren3000]

Great poem!

[Nurvingiel]

About symbolism in general, I think there are many layers to a poem. The "top" one is the most literal, and the bottom ones make the people who think of them wonder if they are too farfetched. Perhaps they are not too farfetched. The bottom layers are down so deep, they could have many meanings.

[katya]

Oh! I want to join! I saw the title and would've shouted "yay!" in joy, but then there would've been soy milk everywhere.
When I'm not in such a rush, I'd like to continue the discussion about "Because I could not stop for death" because I don't know how well I understood it.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by katya

When I'm not in such a rush, I'd like to continue the discussion about "Because I could not stop for death" because I don't know how well I understood it.

I think we should let Nurv start this discussion, since this poem is her favorite.

[Nurvingiel]

Eek! I'm not very good at interpreting poetry. In fact, I don't even like most poetry. I mainly only like four poets: Emily Dickinson, Robert Burns, Robert Frost, and Robert Service. (I only like poets named Emily or Robert. j/k! ) Of course there are exceptions. I'd really rather read someone else's discussion on it. It was very kind to ask me though, tack så mycket! (Thank you very much in Swedish.)

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

tack så mycket! (Thank you very much in Swedish.)

Afouan (you're welcome in Arabic)

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I'd really rather read someone else's discussion on it

I'll post my own thoughts about the poem later, then.

[Beren3000]

Ok, here's "Because I could not stop for death" in full, it's called "The Chariot":

The Chariot
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Here's my interpretation:
The "carriage" or "chariot" is probably the passage of time. She could not "stop" her life to think about Death, so Death stopped and waited for her. What she means is that no matter how much you try to dodge it, you end up thinking about your mortality and eventual death. Death's "civility" in this context would be ironic because in fact Death is being "rude" if you will by sticking to her. Immortality was in the carriage because it's the thought that accompanies death: immortality of the soul. It's the thought that could keep her moving through life. In fact, in another of her poems called "Immortality", Dickinson says that it's "an honorable thought". She gave away her labor and leisure because her life centered around this obsession with Death. The scenes of children in the school and the fields are probably scenes from her own life. Then she passed the sunset; IOW she died. Death took her to a house in the ground: her grave. It seems to her that she had spent centuries there since her death because she's floating out of time after her death. YET longer than these "centuries" is the moment when she first discovered that the chariot is taking her towards eternity; i.e. whe she first learned of the immortality of the soul.
Thoughts?