Journal #28

Emily Dickinson's poem, I heard a fly buzz when I died is extremely interesting. First of all it is very odd that she did not title any of her poems. All of the titles of her poems come from just the first line of her poems. That first line becomes the title. It is very weird that the first thing she was thinking about before she died was a fly. Wouldn't you be thinking about your family, like your kids, or even your friends or even your dog? Why on earth would Emily Dickinson be thinking about a fly before she died. She could of been thinking about her house, or all of her things, or her car if they even had cars back then. It is just very odd that out of all things that she could have been focusing on prior to death that she focused on a fly. The only thing that could make this a bit more normal is if she was trying to focus and think about all of these other things, and then a fly interrupted her thoughts by buzzing around her. It would be kind of sad if you were trying to be thoughtful and serious and think about your own loved ones and then a stupid annoying little fly comes on by and interrupts your own thoughts. A fly would be annoying in that sense, plus I am not a huge fan of flies anyway. They are annoying little creatures. I hope that when it is my time to die and cross that path that a fly does not interrupt my own thoughts so that I can focus on my own thoughts and loved ones. Emily Dickinson as always used lots of poetic devices in her poems. Lots of imagery and personification was used as always. Her poems are all pretty weird, but pretty similar at the same times. I do really like Emily Dickinson as a poet. Her poems are all easy to understand and follow.

Emily Dickinson Partner poem analysis

The poem "Nature, the Gentlest Mother" is a poem by Emily Dickinson. This poem is a discription of mother earth and how she takes care of all of her children and her household (Dickinson). Nature is "impatient of no child" which is a symbol of how Mother Earth takes care of all of her children and people on the planet even when her own children harm her. When she means harm her, she means things like pollution and global warming and things of that sort. Mother Nature however will never turn her back on her children, she will always be there for them. Nature is an aid to her children. SHe is there in the hills and forests in a way to aid the travelers of these lands. This could mean lots of things. A reader could take these noises as wind or as aninmals in the forest or as a number of different things. They are all signs and beings of nature.

In the third stanza of this poem, there is a use of personification. Emily Dickinson is describing all of the flora and fauna, and she describes all of the critters that are on the Mother Nature's planet. They are known as natures household and assembly (Dickinson). The Mother Earth takes care of her children with days from summer by providing nice weather to the critters and the trees. This is the time of the year when agriculture flourishes in comparison to winter where it does not. Mother Nature could make a harsh winter year round, but she does not because she is taking care of her household.

Emily Dickinson says that nature, or mother nature, has an effect on every creature that is on her planet. Dickinson says that it is the smallest cricket or the most unworthy flower still gets taken care of by mother nature. She uses a lot of personification in this poem because she gives human like traits to all of nature and its beings. None of these things actually have human like traits. There is also a lot of imagry in this poem because it is very descriptive. All of her descriptions are very animated and life like and strong. She creates all kinds of images, such as children sleeping, a very small cricket, and an unworthy flower otherwise known as an ugly flower. She presents rhyme in her final stanza, but only with two different lines, the second and the fourth. The rhyme scheme is not constant, but the rhythm is. Her poems are pretty different from other poets because there is not common rhyme schemes in them. She uses a simple beat to match what she was familiar with.

Emily Dickinson has a good way of capturing her readers with many poetic devices. The most common devices used are personification, imagry, and occasionaly a simile or metaphor thrown in the mix. Emily Dickinson captures her readers with out being confusing and using too many poetic devices. She is a very smart and good poet.

Dickinson, Emily . "Nature, the Gentlest Mother." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Web. 29 Mar. 2012.

Journal #27

Apparently it was a known fact that almost all of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung or hummed to the tune of "Amazing Grace". Her poems all have rhythmic lines and the reason I think that you can put most if not all of them to the tune of the folk songs like Amazing Grace and Yellow Rose of Texas is because they just fit really well with different folk songs based on how she wrote her poems with a rhyme scheme and all of these tell a story as they go through. Amazing Grace is actually pretty ironic that they all fit because Emily Dickinson was not a religious person at all. I read in a criticism that she never was actually a member of her church, but all of her family was extremely faithful to the church and religious. She just sort of went with the flow and followed them and went through the motions of the church.Dickinson's poems have a basic standard rhyme scheme, it is not very different or unique. So, since one can fit into Amazing Grace or Yellow Rose of Texas, then all of them can basically fit into that rhyme scheme. Hymnals and folk songs have a very basic tune, and so does Emily Dickinson's poems. In the past everything was pretty much just iambic pentameter and very structured and very different than Dickinson. This was traditional for the time being, but Dickinson being the very odd different individual she was, she broke this and matched her poems up to what she knew which were simple folk songs, and hymnals. I think that Emily Dickinson's poems and rhyme schemes are better than her peer poets because they are so much easier to follow because it is just that basic rhyme scheme. Sometimes in other poems and songs that have a complex rhyme scheme it makes the story of the poem or song much harder to follow because of the complex system.

Emily Dickinson Writing Style

Throughout the years at Pleasant Plains High School, and I am sure other high schools as well, students have read and studied the work of Emily Dickinson. She is probably one of the most famous female poets, and it is pretty safe to say she was a very different person. Emily Dickinson decided to live her life in secluysion actually in Amherst, Massachusetts (Leiter). She expressed herself very strongly through poems and letters. She would not show any of these letters or poems to anyone, but her sister Lavinia. Lavinia acutally published her writings after the death of her sister. It is said that to actually understand Emily Dickinson's writing and her writing style you must understand her life (Leiter). She went through some extremely tough school, and had a very stubborn and strict father who had radical beliefs on women and their place in society. Religion was a big thing in the time period of Emily Dickinson, but she was not religious she just joined the church because that was what was expected, and her fmaily was a part including her sister whom she was very close with, and her strict father.

The poems of Emily Dickinson are definitley considered classics and are read nation wide if not world wide. They are however hard to fit into a category because of the subjects she wrote about and how she wrote them. Dickinson often wrote of love, life, death, nature, and would often question immortality (McChesney). These are actually common themes in pretty much all literature read today and previous excluding the Puritan writing period because it was all about god. In Poem 549, Dickinson speaks to the reader and the lines resonate through time as they will always be true: "That till I loved/ I never lived—Enough—" (McChesney). This is a verse that still holds extremely true today because love is such a big part of anyone's life. You can live your life and have money and be happy, but money can not buy happiness. However, a lot of time love will give one happiness.

Emily Dickinson definitley did not fit into a Modernist writer, but she was not a realist either. Modernist thought that society was oh so great and perfect and terrible for no reason. A modernist writer believed that a real person who is both thoughtful and real does not fit into society because it is mindless after the first world war we had. Dickinson did not seem to feel this way at all. She really thought that every single person had a place and a purpose. She wrote trying to figure out what these places and purposes were for people. Many people agree with this today. People were not just put onto this earth for absolutley no reason. Every body has a purpose, it is just up to them whether or not they would actually like to find it. She did not remotley belong to any onhe period, just like Whitman. She was just a writer who wrote about what she believed. Perhaps this is why these two writers were so successful, because they dared to be different.

Leiter, Sharon. "Dickinson, Emily." Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.

McChesney, Sandra. "A View from the Window: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." In Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.

Walt Whitman Writing Style

Walt Whitman is sometimes known as a "tweener". He is called this by some because he does not just fit into one literary period easily. He is between periods hence the name "tweener". Whitman was inbetween the Realism and the Modernism period. Realism was a writing period that focused lesss on the plot of stories and more on characterization. They were mostly things that could be real life events or were real life events. The charceters in writings from the realism period show a lot of how real life people could react to situations. Then we went to the Modernism period. Modernism period was very different. It focused a lot on losses. There was also a strong presense of religion and sometimes lies. They were two very different periods and Whitman fell right inbetween the two.

Walt Whitman was a poet during the 1800s, and he was not a tradtionally poet either. He sort of broke the whole idea everyone had about poetry and created a new type. Tradionally at this time it was all about rhyming and metric verses (Connors). Walt Whitman just did not believe that this type of writing represented our country well. Whitman instead wrote in free verse, and tackled some taboo topics of the time such as sex (Oliver). Whitman was not the inventer of free verse, but he did introduce it to America. It was first shunned by critics and not embraced, but eventually Americans learned to like and understand it (Oliver).

Whitman's poetry was full of sexual love and exalation of the body (Oliver). This shocked and startled many people because this was not a topic everyone spoke about at this time. It was extremely taboo. His poems were very graphic and filled with sexual actions and refrences. They even talked about homosexual love. It is said that some of poems had to be edited to be "family friendly". Many critics suggested the editing of them to make them less graphic and offensive including Emerson (Connors).

The story titled "from Song of Myself" is full of idea of individualism. The quote " I celbrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you (Whitman 2). THis totally represents the idea of individualism and of being oneself because for god's sake he says he will celebrate himself and that others should too. A critic named Matt Longabucco has a big article on Whitman's career in literature. he says that the poet is not seperable from his physical body and the poet is one of the roughs. No stander about men and women is apart from them (Longabucca).Longabucca realized that Whitman did have a general set-up to his writings which I have also noticed when reading his poetry. The idea that he is a "tweener" shows that he can neither be considered a modernist or a realist writer. It is fair to say he is a tweener which is actually what I think a lot of writers are because it is hard to posess every single trait of a period because sometimes you have to go with one's own values even if they do not embody the period completely.

Connors, Judith. "Whitman, Walt." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 19 Mar. 2012.

Oliver, Charles M. "Whitman, Walt." Critical Companion to Walt Whitman: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 19 Mar. 2012.

Longabucco, Matt. "'The Proof of a Poet'—Walt Whitman and His Critics." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCWWh03&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 19, 2012).

Whitman, Walt. "from song of Myself." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.

Walt Whitman Poem Reflection

From the first stanza of "On the Beach at Night Alone" you can tell that it has to do with Naturalism. The first stanza goes "On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future" (Whitman). The old woman is on the beach and being one with nature. Nature is such a common theme in all of these poems. I think that this was such a common theme because Emerson and Thoreau were such strong believers in nature. They thought pretty much everything came from nature, and this is why I think that all these poems have such strong themes. Emerson and Thoreau definitely had an impact on later writers because they have some common themes that all of the writers follow. Emerson and Thoreau were big on philosophy and I think that they were very strong believers and very strong willed. They had a lot of good ideas that transferred down to all these writers that came after their time. They had some ideas that were very different from people of their time (Quinn). I feel like people may have looked down on them in that time because they thought a little differently than others. It reminds me of the quote, Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone. Whitman had quite a few poems that had to do with nature, and again this is because he is a writer of the Naturalism period. Nature was a huge impact on everything that they did especially the arts with literature and other things. Even the art that was done at this time had to do with nature. Even still today there is an impact from nature, but I do not think it is as big as it was. However, even today exercises come from nature such as yoga. You become one with nature at that time and it reminds me a lot of this literary time period.

Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= DLLT1007&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 14, 2012)


Whitman, Walt. "On the Beach at Night Alone, by Walt Whitman." Poetry Archive. Web. 12 Mar. 2012

Reflection- Emily Dickinson I meant to find her

The poem I read was "I Meant to Find Her" by Emily Dickinson. It reminded me a lot of the Spoon River Anthology because the main theme in the book was death. Dickinson was trying to get to a dying friend, but it was too late. "I meant to find her when I came;
Death had the same design" (Dickinson). The rest of the poem talks about how she wishes she would of got to her, and that now the person who has died was nothing more than a memory. This just reminds me of the anthology because every single poem in the set of poems common theme was death, because it was all written in the form of people who had died. The way I think people of this writing period look at things is like when someone dies they become one with nature. I definitely think that Emerson and Thoreau feels this way. Characteristics of both writers were that they learned things through communing with nature (Quinn). They believed a lot that a lot of things came from nature, so I feel that when a person dies they become one with nature. You can also look at it a little different way like that nature was punishing the person who died for doing something wrong. This is like the story we read last week titled "To Build A Fire" because this person died because he did stupid things with nature. He was punished because he was being stupid and was not respecting nature like he was supposed to. So then he died and that was the end of it. It definitely was not a happy ending and neither was this Emily Dickinson poem, but it did have meaning. I feel sorry for Emily Dickinson because she lost someone close to her to death when she was trying to reach her at the same time. If only that person could of got a little more time, then maybe Dickinson could of had a good bye.

Dickinson, Emily. Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Web. 12 Mar. 2012.

Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= DLLT1007&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 14, 2012)

Jack London-To Build A Fire

Jack London's story "To Build a Fire" was a story that has a lot do with nature. Nature plays a huge part because that is what the plot of the whole story is based around. The main character in the story goes out into nature when the weather is about negative 75 degrees at the time. In the end of the story the man dies in the cold after making a mistake because his feet get wet(London). This has a lot to do with nature because during this literary period a lot of people believed that nature controlled pretty much every aspect of life. If you treated nature right and respected it, then nature would treat you right and would respect you. This man does not treat nature right because it was definitely not smart to go out and interact with it when it is that cold. That is a time that nature would want to be left alone, but the main character does not respect the fact that he wants to be left alone and goes out in it. It has a lot to do with karma as well. If he would of respected nature then this would not have happened to him and he would have lived. This also has a lot do with survival of the fittest, which is a Darwin theory. Survival of the fittest is not only physically most fit, but also emotionally and intellectually most fit. This guy I do not think was very intellectual because he was not very smart to go out and do what he did. The realism period is co involved with naturalism. Naturalism has a lot do with nature(Diamond). Obviously this story is about nature. I wish the story would have ended better and he would of lived because even though he made poor choices, no person should have to die and freeze in the cold like that. The author, Jack London, actually wrote a second ending to the book where the character lived, but it never took off and went anywhere.

Diamond, Marie Josephine, ed. "naturalism." Encyclopedia of World Writers, 1800 to the Present. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= GEWW410&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 8, 2012).

London, Jack. "To Build a Fire, by Jack London." The World of Jack London 2012®. Web. 08 Mar. 2012. .

The Richard Cory Blog

"Richard Cory" was a poem, and much like the past few passages and works of literature we have read has been very sad and pretty short. Anyways, Richard Cory was about a guy who was extremely rich. This man was the one everyone wanted to be. He impressed everyone. He made all of the rest of the people jealous because they wanted to take his place. They wanted what he had, meat bread and money. He however was still a very clean cut and genuinely nice man(Edwin). Everything about this man seemed to be so perfect, the perfect life, money, the perfect clothing. However, this is not how it was. This is only how it appeared from the outside. Richard Cory, the perfect man, goes home one night and shoots himself. He puts the bullet right through his head(Edwin).

This story is pretty deep. It is hard to understand why someone who seemed so happy and seemed to perfect to just end his life like that. Suicide is something that effects not only the life of the one who is taken, but all of the ones who loved the person as well. It is really sad that a person would cause so much pain to themselves and to others. However this man only seemed perfect by what people saw, the materials. Emerson and Thoreau were not very big on the idea of materialistic happiness because they are just things. It was his apperance that was perfect, not his life. He only looked perfect from the surface. Sure this man had material happiness, but that is not always real happiness. Money can not buy happiness in Emerson and Thoreau's eyes. This man was so much better than everyone supposedly, but he was so unhappy to take his own life away from himself and others. He had to resort to something so violent. Maybe if this guy would of spent time seeking the real happiness in life, things that matter like helping people and love then he would not of been so unhappy and perhaps he would of been able to live his life happily.

Robinson, Edwin A. "Richard Cory." Glencoe Literature: The Reader's Choice. New York, NY: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2002. 575+. Print.

The Darling Blog

"The Darling" was a story that was about a woman who was or has been married to a number of different men and some of them have died. She was loved all of these men and they loved her. This woman's father died when she was a small child and then she inherited the townhouse that her family owned after the death where she then lived with her husband of the time, Kukin. Kukin was a theater owner. He was a weird guy and seemed to always be sad because of the rain. Because of the rain he moved and left to go to Moscow to meet some actors to hire. Olga was told of the death when she was awoken in her house and she was obviously upset and sad about the death and moved on to the Vasily. Vasily Pustovalov was a timber merchant and she eventually fell in love with this guy and they had a child, a son. Vasily then died from a cold. So once again this woman Olga is all alone and has to grieve the loss of yet another husband(Glencoe Literature).

This story had a very sad vibe because it was all about losing your loved one and death. Everyone died that she got closed to and she loved. This would eventually make loving people hard because you would be scared to get attatched. Even though she would mourn the death of these men and she would feel alone she obviously got over them pretty fast because she moved right on to Vasily after the first death of the husband. I do not think she really knew what love was because that is not something you can get passed so quickly. I almost think this person was selfish because she seemed to always want to have someone there. Maybe to impress society which completely goes against Emerson and Thoreau because you should value yourself and not the opinions of the rest of society(Quinn). I think she needed to think a little more about loving herself and not searching for the love of others.


Chekhov, Anton. "The Darling." Glencoe Literature: The Reader's Choice. New York, NY: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2000. 557-66. Print.

Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= DLLT1007&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 14, 2012)

I will fight no more

I will fight no more is a pretty short literature piece that is about pretty much exactly what it sounds...a man who is tired of fighting and will fight no more although as a reader you are never really informed as to why he is fighting and who the man is fighting against. However, we do know that people are dying and that they are dying in battles. All the elders have died and only the young are left(McCloskey). I think maybe something a little deeper is meant by this. Perhaps there is a war and they are sick of fighting in this war, war was or is rather for that matter part of government. If this man was against war because he was sick of it then he would be against government. Being against government would relate to both Emerson and Thoreau because they did not believe in the whole idea of government especially Emerson who believed in the whole idea of civil disobedience(Quinn). Also both Emerson and Thoreau believed a lot on independence and not in society. I feel that this man wants to be independent and make his own decision to stop fighting instead of going with society and keep fighting. Also apperently society had not made the best decisions if everyone is dying and perhaps it would be better if people started to make their own decision and quit this fight. However, this chief justice seems very selfish because it was his job to fight and think and he is just giving up. It seems as if he is just giving up because he does not want to fight anymore, but maybe there were deeper thoughts behind this and as a reader reading this short piece I am just missing this. I would like to think that he was thinking the way Emerson and Thoreau did with the whole idea of being independent and did not want to go with society. I hope chief joseph was thinking with this mind set and not a selfish one.

McCloskey, Mary. "I Will Fight No More Forever." Welcome to Georgia State University. Web. 01 Mar. 2012.

Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= DLLT1007&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 14, 2012)

Edgar Lee Masters – Spoon River Anthology

Spoon River Anthology is a collection of short free form poems. It is an extremely weird collection because each of the poems except the first one which serves as an introduction is what is called an epitaph of a dead person, and it is delivered by the dead person him or herself. They make observations and talk about their thoughts of life from an outside point of view and some just talk about their life and when their life took a turning point. It is an extremely odd collection. It is said that a major inspiration for the Anthology of Spoon River was epigrams from Greek Anthology(Becker). This Spoon River Anthology was inspired by earlier time periods of anthology but I am sure that it was tweeked a little bit and does not have all the same characteristics. A successful Chicago lawyer, named Masters, wrote a lot of Spoon River Anthology during the weekends and stuff(Becker). This collection relates to realism because it uses mysterious things. Also, they have some talk of afterlife which might be a contradiction to previous literary periods where god was everything. If god was everything you would just go right up to heaven and there would never be no such talk as things of after life and what not. However, I think that both Emerson and Thoreau were smarter than to just go with the flow without back up info and maybe that would contridict things like just going straight to heaven. It is very interesting that this man was from Illinois, it makes me like him a lot more because he was from Illinois. He was actually from the area that my dad was from, Havana, Illinois. However, these stories were still odd because they were about that of an afterlife(Masters). This collection of poems is very different from all of the stories and works that we have read before because it talks a lot about death and weird things as where the other stories talked about normal things like love, but some others were about death but they were not dead people talking to you because that is odd.




Becker, Geraldine Cannon. "Spoon River Anthology." In Anderson, George P., Judith S. Baughman, Matthew J. Bruccoli, and Carl Rollyson, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition: Into the Modern: 1896–1945, Volume 3. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EAmL1405&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 2, 2012).


Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology. New York, 1951. Print.