What+We+Did+In+Class+Feb+13

I found the exercise that we did in class today very helpful. We broke the poem Emily Dickinson wrote into stanzas and tried to figure out what she was trying to say. This technique helped me understand the poem better because you sort of took a step back from the 'big picture' and grand scheme of the poem to look at it in a little bit deeper detail. Before we did this exercise, I had a completly different idea of what the poem actually meant than after we did the exercise. I also find it sort of cool and unique that she chose to write a poem and talk about death- being is a very touchy and delicate subject to discuss back then and even nowadays. I find it a bit daring to just jump into a subject such as death and describe it in such detail like she does. She didn't even care if people would think she was a bad poet for doing this, she just went right along and did it anyways. This is also another reason why I admire Emily Dickinson and her poetry. It's just to bad that people didn't really figure out that she was such a great poet when she was still alive, and only began to admire her after her death... 1202946822

Breaking down Emily Dickinson's poem, "Because i could not stop for death," was very effective towards my understanding of it. Going through each of the stanzas and writing down my thoughts on them helped me put it all together and see what the poem was about. Stanza 1: This stanza shows that Death is not a scary thing. Also that Death leads you to Immortality because once you die you become immortal and live forever in heaven or hell. Stanza 2: In the first stanza it says how she couldn't stop for Death because she as too busy, but in this stanza she puts her labor and leisure away. Stanza 3: This stanza just names the places the she and Death pass on the way to death. Stanza 4: This stanza says that she and Death go to a dark, dewy place. However, she is not dresses for the chilled weather in her tippet. This 4th stanza was taken out in some versions of the poem because people didn't like the thought of a woman wearing barely any clothing. Stanza 5: In this stanza she and Death ride up to the underground grave that the dead people go in. Stanza 6: In this stanza she is in Eternity looking back on the day that Death came to her. Since then it has been centuries, but it seems like only a day to her. 1202956007KCa

I thought that looking back at this poem was a great help. The view that Emily took on death was so different from most peoples attempts to grasp the unknown. She talked about death as it were a person. And almost as a friend. There is no reason humans to view death as the enemy she says we should view death as a transporter from our lives to our enternal paradise. She wants people to welcome death and go into the next stage of life with happiness. 1202957213

i really agree with everyone on this page because it made it so much easier to understand when we broke it down like that. in a way it seems, to me at least, that these poems were almost meant to be broken down to understand. it kind of flows a bit and has a little story in each stanza that if you break it down you can piece it back together to decipher it. I really liked how we did "Tough Words," this really helped because it seems like she capitalizes random words and i kind of did not understand them, but the activity we did helped me alot. I can also tell it helped other people in the class as well, just by reading this forum. The only complaint i really have is that i kind of wanted to read another book because i like them better than poems, but it doesn't seem like we are going to have time to do so.

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I agree with the people who posted before me. I really enjoy reading poems by Emily Dickinson, she is an amazing poet. But even though I like her poems, some of them are very difficult for me to understand. I never understand a poem the first time I read it through. It class that day we started to take the stanzas and break them up, we would look to see if he was comparing anything or what he is really talking about. We now do this every time we read one of her poems in class, and I have even gotten used to doing it when I read her poems my myself. This technique is a really helpful one. Even though it might seem like it would take a while, but really it would be faster because you would understand it better rather than keep reading the whole poem about ten time and still missing important facts. This technique has helped me so much and i recomend that anyone try it when reading a poem, even if it isn't a Emily Dickinson one. 1203867192

I also thought that splitting this poem into stanzas was very effective. It really helped me understand what the poem was about. It helped me because if I thought of something and my partner thought of something else we would kind of compromise and combine both of our opinions about the stanza/poem. It helped me understand better what the poem was trying to teach us because before this method I would have to read the poem many times before I understood it. 1203872146

In class this friday we talked about a number of things; as they mentioned above the unique rythems she uses such as 3343 and 4343. These are called quatraines these are what made her very unique at the time. In fact people did not even consider it peotry, little did they know she would later be recognized as one of the greatest writers of all time. Emily Dickinson used two different kinds of writing and they were inner and outer experiences. An example of an outer experience is in peom 328 when she talkes about her inneractions with the bird. She also write peoms that express an idea such as much madness is a divinest sence. She sais things that most people do not agree with right away and that is one of the reasons she sucluded her self from civilization. 1203879401

I also really agree with everyone else. Emily Dickinson is a great writer and she always gets right to the point and most of her poems are somewhat shorter. Although her poems can be very confusing she uses lots of long words, extended metaphors and comparisons, riddles, and she writes in a very interesting style with many dashes and sentences continuing for 3 or 4 lines! So when in class we broke down the poem stanza by stanza and looked for the meaning inside of it that really helped. Also this helped to understand the whole meaning of the poem, like at the end we could take each of the stanzas meanings and kind of put them together to find the pupose of the poem. We also found the two different things that she was comparing. I think that whenever we do anything in class with poems like disecting them or finding the meanings of words or the comparisons it really helps. 1203883859

I agree with the idea we worked with in clase. Breaking down poems really helps me understand them, that goes for alot of things too. In life so many things may seem so complicated but when you break it down you realize what it really is. I believe in clas when we gather into a circle or oval it really helps. I like hearing everyones point of veiw because it helps me and others become more productive thinkers. I think class descustion really helps everyone get an overall picture of the material along with the fact that it saves time instead of constant re-reading and it helps us beocme better students with better grades and that what carmel is all about. I would love to get into debates soon if that possible and i know alot of the class would be intereasted to. Overall i think the class i constructed rather well for what we are doing now.

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I also liked how we broke down the poem in class I just started doing that to all of Emily Dickinson's poems because it is a lot easier to understand her poetry now that I do this because I used to just read poetry and try to get what the poets meant by reading the whole poem. Now i break down the poems into stanzas and lines and it is so much easier to understand poetry now. I also like when we get into a giant circle and discuss the poems because I get to hear other peoples views on what lines and stanzas mean so if I dont understand something i can figure out what it means by listening to other peoples ideas about the poetry. 1203990575

My summarization of the poem 712 is this:

stanza 1- I believe the author is saying that she wasn't thinking about death she was just living out her life. She was too busy living so death had to come to her instead of her giving up to death. But when she said that death //kindly// stopped for her it's like her saying that death did a favor for her. It's like death was relieving for her. When she gets in the carriage, death is sitting in there already patiently waiting for her. stanza 2- Emily Dickinson describes the carriage ride as a slow long ride, no rush at all. Death is not a rush, just an almost delightful state of mind. She also said that she stopped being leisurely in response to Death's kind act of patience in waiting for her. stanza 3- This stanza describes the two taking a carriage ride through the narrator's past, remembering the times in her life like her childhood. stanza 4- This section of Dickinson's poem describes the feeling of death that the narrator starts to feel. She starts to get a cold chill. And in this i picture the narrator, a woman wearing thin clothing, as white as a ghoast, shiverring with goosbumps and dark circles under her eyes. stanza 5- The coffin of the narrator is explained here. The roof is the tombstone and the cornice is the cofffin. stanza 6- She finishes the poem by saying that this one day in the state of mind of almost dead is the longest day of your life and that it's the most meaningful day and after that day you really can't keep count of the days and that they are really short. 1203997912

I thought that what we did in class was a great help to reading poems. I think the breaking down the poems is a great way to get the true meaning and understanding of what she is trying to say. Sometimes poetry can be a little tricky by using different types of metaphors and other kinds of phrases that are comparing somthing to another thing. I use to just read the poerty and take most of it literal if i didn't understand what was going on. That didn't work out to well for me. This new way of reading and breaking down poems is a real life saver. I also like having the group discussions in the circle because it also gives me a chance to hear others opinions on what that poem really meant to them. We can talk things out and discuss why we though a certain way. I also like the way Br. Tom does the live audio of stories because it stead of reading to yourself, i think that you can conprehend more if someone else reads it to you. 1204168830

I know i am posting to this topic late but i did post on this before and i talked about the 4343 and the 3343, but this time i am going to talk about the breaking up of the stanzas. I thought this day started to get boring at the end of the day but it helped me a lot over all. The breaking each poem up of stanza's really helped me comprehend overall. I did alreadyget this poem and i did like it but this poem made me think about it and like it more. I liked the first stanzaa the best because it made me realize that death is not as bad as it seams. Sometimes it can be a good thing it could ease your pain and move on to a better life in heaven or hell wherever you may go. 1204249102