Thread
| I want to ask your opinion mindbodysoul 7 Oct 08 2:54PM | Thread Closed |
I would like some opinions if I may ask. How do you feel Emily Dickinson creates meaning in this poem - this in not an analysis of what its meaning IS, but how it is created within the words. I have my own ideas, yes, but I'd like to hear yours. It is the poem commonly referred to as Chariot, shown below:
"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
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet – only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity."
-Emily Dickinson
Any meaningful thoughts would be welcomed. Thank you all very much in advance.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion nugunz 7 Oct 08 2:56PM | Thread Closed |
Putting us in a carriage, as we tread along, to me adds a very palpable sense of the impending, or the ticking clock. It's anticipation and anxiety. Hardcore.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion mindbodysoul 7 Oct 08 3:25PM | Thread Closed |
Thanks nugunz.
Please keep in mind, I am not so much interested in an analysis of what you think it means, but rather on how meaning is created by the arrangement and choice of words, and other literary tactics.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion nugunz 7 Oct 08 3:28PM | Thread Closed |
That's what I'm saying. The setting is a tool.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion mindbodysoul 7 Oct 08 3:37PM | Thread Closed |
Oh yes I know, I was just reminding anyone else who cares to respond; I didn't feel I was clear in the first post.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion AlchemiA 7 Oct 08 3:44PM | Thread Closed |
the first line sets the tone and timber -- the poet creates a basket of mentionables where we the reader gather the 'meaning' using the vivid word-colours of her day -- the foreshadow of the first line echos through to the last gasp where we fall off our horse headlong toward the infinite in -- everything in-between is word-music with a pulse ever diminishing
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| re: I want to ask your opinion unknown 7 Oct 08 3:53PM | Thread Closed |
it's always an analysis of what meaning is. there's no other recourse except to your own position. what level, for instance do you want the meaning 'explained'? as for a child or for a mature poet? or a beginning poet or a mature reader? you might say that the meaning of this is to 'write a poem like Goethe' and you'd probably be right. if you were very naive though, and thought she was some kind of idiot savant, you might talk about her childlike innocence and the way she talks about childish things. some people do say that about her -- that's the 'meaning' the find in her writing. if you simply want the 'plot of the poem' then you're asking for the same level of explication they're asking, no matter how nice and respectful you feel you're being.
personally, i'd ask about the 'tippet/tulle' move, since it seems contrived to 'make the poem'... it seems as fake a move as some newbie's; but the suggestion behind it, that the we're wearing our shroud each and every moment, and we're as exposed in a self-consciousness of mortality, suggests an intuition which can only be known from personal experience -- i'm understanding her, in this way, from my reading of Alcott and particularly of branston alcott, and seeing her apply a european sensibility on the american wish-to-be-as-real... as though her poetry is a commentary on 'the complicated folks'. really, though, you want to ask why she wrote at all and what she thought she was writing. anything less is high school english class.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion mindbodysoul 7 Oct 08 4:07PM | Thread Closed |
It's a good thing I'm in high school then, replace English with Writer's Craft and you're bang on. Anyways, I must disagree with you that "it's always an analysis of what meaning is". I want to know how this meaning is created, not necessarily what it is. This is the writer's craft. The way we make the meaning shine, through literary techniques. We can think something and write it down, and that's fine, but to help others understand, those linguistic elements need to be integrated. So we have to search for the meaning and learn it, instead of having it handed to us on a platter.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion Isabelle5 7 Oct 08 4:13PM | Thread Closed |
I love this poem. I feel that Emily sets the tone by making this a journey, a kind driver, so that Death is not seen as something evil and dark but gracious and alive, in no rush, he lets her catch her breath privately. They pass normal things, unfrightening things - children, fields growing with grain.
I love the way she makes it as if death is so good that it took years to realize which side of the divide she was on. She doesn't have to do anything, "he passed us." A lovely gentle journey.
It's the use of peaceful, normal words, I believe, that makes this work so well as a poem that could be morbid and dark, considering the subject matter. But of course, I love writing about death, too, so this poem is one of my favorites.
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| re: I want to ask your opinion mindbodysoul 7 Oct 08 4:16PM | Thread Closed |
Thanks for the input Isabelle, I was thinking many of the same things.
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