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.