Emily Dickinson

This three-stanza poem by Emily Dickinson relies on a number of literary devices for its effectiveness. It begins with an aphorism--a statement of truth expressed in a concise, witty manner....

In this Emily Dickinson poem, the speaker briefly records, first, what she sees, as if she is jotting down quick notes. She lists such things as a hill, a squirrel, and a bumblebee. These very...

Considering that "There is another sky" speaks of a worldly place (Amherst, Dickinson's home) and an otherworldly place, heaven, the main poetic device is metaphor. The speaker describes a worldly...

Emily Dickinson used three types of rhyme: First is exact rhyme. Take the poem "Because I Could Not Stop For Death," for example. Examples of exact rhyme is me/Immortality in the first stanza. She...

When Dickinson says, "Witchcraft was hung, in History," she seems to mean that modern thinkers no longer believe in witchcraft; it is a thing associated with history only. It is considered to be a...

This is a brief but powerful poem on the theme of trauma and its ripple effects on a person's life. Dickinson describes a "wound," unidentified, which grew sufficiently large that every part of her...

Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of Emily Dickinson's irony and sarcasm is her short poem "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" First, saying "I'm Nobody" is verbal irony, because everybody is...

One way to identify and analyze tone is to look at the writer’s word choice, which we refer to as diction. Emily Dickinson’s poem “Success is Counted Sweetest” is, like most of her poems, very...

Emily Dickinson's personal life comes through in the themes of her poetry as well as in its style. Common themes of her work include death, grief, nature, love, and introspection. Dickinson grieved...

Emily Dickinson has many personas in her poetry. Cynthia Griffin Wolff, in "The Many Voices in Dickinson's Poetry" says: One poem may be delivered in a child's Voice; another in the Voice of a...

There were many reasons why very few of Emily Dickinson’s poems appeared while she was still alive. Her poems were extremely unusual for her period in syntax, style, approach, and punctuation,...

Emily Dickinson is widely regarded as a Romantic poet. That said, this idea does not keep critics and readers from examining her and her work from a Confessionalist's point of view. According to...

The last stanza of this excellent poem by Emily Dickinson seals her argument that success can only be savoured and understood most by those who, ironically, do not succeed, by giving us an example...

This short poem by Emily Dickinson comprises seven lines and has an ABABCBB rhyme scheme. The meter of the poem is also irregular, with the first line having a pattern of stresses equivalent to...

This very short poem by Emily Dickinson, numbered 1583, is an example of Dickinson's use of ambiguity and understatement. The assertion that "witchcraft was hung in History" probably refers to the...

In Emily Dickinson's poem "The Brain Within Its Groove," the speaker seems to be saying that the brain runs smoothly in its groove as long as thoughts run evenly: The Brain, within its GrooveRuns...

There is an element of mystery surrounding the subject of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, her desire (or lack of desire) to see her works published, and whether her poems were published with or without...

The rhyme scheme of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Tell all the Truth but Tell it slant—” seems relatively straightforward at first. Line 2 clearly rhymes with line 4, while line 6 obviously rhymes with...

The above answer discusses the contextual factors surrounding this poem, and its likely connection to the physical place that was Amherst at the time of writing. Divorced from this biographical...

After researching many scholars' opinions on the notion of the "purple Host" in Emily Dickinson's poem, the truth of the matter is that we can only speculate the true meaning of its symbolism....

There is a very famous poem titled "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918). It also became a very famous song, which we heard so often over the years that we became pretty sick of it. Here is the...

Emily Dickinson can be viewed as a rebel because she challenged many traditional notions that people had at that time. For instance, in her poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," Dickinson...

The "purple Host" Emily Dickinson refers to in this poem are the soldiers of the victorious army that "took the Flag today," that is, won the most recent battle. Although they are outwardly...

Emily Dickinson’s poetry has always been rife with metaphors and imagery, and “Where ships of purple gently toss” is a great example. The “ships” have been interpreted as flowers in a garden and...

As are many of Dickinson's poems, "I dreaded that first Robin, so--" is essentially an elegy centered on the tension between life, as represented by nature, and death, as represented by the...

In her poem “There is a Solitude of Space,” Emily Dickinson presents a speaker who deeply values privacy and juxtaposes this important quality to the requirements of society. Although the speaker...

1. It seems that the speaker is observing the scene from outside, probably from a nearby house ("opposite" her own), but this speaker also seems to see herself as apart from the rest of the...

God is not 'moved,' either by the suffering of the flower, or of humanity, in Emily Dickinson's poem 'Apparently with no surprise.' Although the poem seems to be superficially about one of her...

In "I'm 'wife'—I've finished that—," the poem's speaker, a married woman, compares her life now as a wife to her former life as a "Girl," or single young woman. She says in the first stanza that...

In some poems, Dickinson seems distrustful of the majority, as though it is much safer to rely on one's own wits and ideas and to avoid those of the majority altogether. Take the poem we refer to...

Dickinson's unusual punctuation and rhyme ("near-rhyme" or "slant-rhyme," in which the rhymes are inexact) are an integral part of her means of expression. Look, for instance, at The Soul selects...

One can find apostrophe, metonymy, and possibly synecdoche in this poem by Emily Dickinson. Apostrophe is a dramatic or formal address, often to an inanimate object, such as , "O Life!" However, it...

"They shut me up in Prose-" consists of three quatrains, which are stanzas of four lines each. In the first stanza, the speaker uses a metaphor to liken being forced to think in prose—to think...

Dickinson's poem "While I was fearing it, it came" uses the conventional ballad or common measure we expect to find in her poetry. This is the alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic...

I have to use the word "appreciate" instead of "like" when it comes to Dickinson's poetry. As others have mentioned, her works are generally short and simple to read but have enough complexity to...

I was tempted to pass this question up...tone is one of those things that can be a bit subjective and requires some thought. All in all, I find it to be one of the harder elements of fiction to...

Emily Dickinson wrote in what is known as "common meter". Common meter includes alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Dickinson probably chose this meter because it was...

The news to which Emily Dickinson refers in “I'll tell you how the Sun rose” is the dawning of a new day. The word “news” is particularly appropriate here for two reasons. First of all, because a...

This nature riddle by Emily Dickinson was published in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1924, and in that version, the answer was provided beneath the poem in parentheses. The poem...

Dickinson also employs irony, created when what we expect to happen differs significantly, or is even opposite, of what actually occurs in reality. In this poem, the speaker claims that it is...

Emily Dickinson examines the themes of mental anguish, fear, loneliness, anxiety, and internal conflict throughout her poem "One need not be a chamber to be haunted." Throughout the poem, Dickinson...

In Emily Dickinson's short poem, "Heart! We will forget him," the speaker uses an apostrophe, speaking directly to her heart. And she also personifies her heart as something that will, with her,...

Finding the last poem written by Emily Dickinson provided some interesting information. Dickinson published only a few poems during her lifetime; and other than in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson...

Dickinson uses a metaphor when she describes the “amazing sense” that poets “Distill” from “ordinary Meanings” as an “Attar”; an attar is a really intensely fragrant oil produced from flower petals...

The most obvious stylistic literary device used here is consonance. This is the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different. In "There Is...

Emily Dickinson's poem beginning with the line "It dropped so low -- in my Regard" is open to a wide variety of interpretations.One thing we can note is that she juxtaposes concrete objects with...