EMILY DICKINSON Enlightened and modern; yet a recluse

BACKGROUND Many great writers were active people who had strange experiences, traveled widely, and knew a lot of people. Do you think a woman who just stayed home, hardly ever saw anyone, and only published seven poems during her lifetime could be a great poet?

EMILY DICKINSON WAS. Emily Dickinson was. In fact, she is considered one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. She is a rather unusual person. She seldom left her house, she never married, and she always dressed in white. But she wrote wonderful poems about nature, love, life, and death. Her poems are short and not hard to read, but they have deep meanings.

IF I CAN STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

I’M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU? I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there’s a pair of us? Don’t tell. They’d advertise, you know! How dreary to be somebody! How public-like a frog. To tell one’s name the livelong-- June To an admiring bog!

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all. And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird. That kept so many warm I’ve heard it in the chilliest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity.

INTRODUCTION "Poetry is the human soul entire, squeezed like a lemon or a lime, drop by drop, into atomic words." --Langston Hughes

OTHER POETS Usually poets try to do more than just explain an idea or describe a scene. They write without the usual rules for writing sentences and don't care about logical order like in an essay. They often try to emphasize images. They use symbolism to get us to understand what they have to say. In some ways they reconstruct the world to make us see things in a different way, feel in a certain manner.

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS  1. Do you know who she is?  2. Where and when was she born?  3. What was her life like?  4. What are the main themes in her poetry?  5. Why is she so important in American literature?

PICTURE OF EMILY DICKINSON

LET’S ANALYZE THE POEMS  Line # Rhyming Words Rhyme Pattern

IF I COULD STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

IF I COULD STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING  1. Who is the speaker?  2. How does the writer show her love to  the weak?  3. How does Emily think of the world around her?  What is the main theme of the poetry?

ANALYSIS Who is the speaker? Why does the speaker use such a disparate comparison? How does she think of the world around her? What is the theme of this poem?

PAIR ACTIVITY Theme Speaker/AddresseeRepetition/Verbs/Tense Rhetorical Devices Images Language/Three Syllable words