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If There Are Spirits Emily Dickinson Analysis

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The story she is now “telling” about her life involves a kind of dissembling, or hiding under false appearances, which may be characteristic of all art. In this poem, as in others, Jennings seems to be guided by Emily Dickenson’s dictum “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” The contradiction between the statements made in the opening tercet and the ideas suggested in the rest of the poem opens the poem up to a number of probable readings. As a result of this disjunction, the poem can be read as an enactment or performance of the speaker’s mind in the process of fabricating a coherent argument to justify something she cannot really understand. The rationalization starts with the calculations, the enumerations, and the self-justifying comparisons …show more content…

The first stanza considers the implications of the fanciful hypothesis of the opening lines: “If there are spirits, then they breathe in birds/ Tossed by the winds, agile in the frost.”The second stanza reiterates the familiar notion of the symbiotic relationship between humankind and nature. By the third stanza it is clear that Jennings is not apostrophizing the birds nor she is using the bird imagery as symbol merely to evoke representative responses about creativity. Jennings is concerned in the ways in which poems produce meanings, with the use of birds as symbols and with poets who use these symbols in order to approximate reality and communicate with others. The “birds,” “angels,” and “Greek Nymphs” are traditional symbols representing transcendent power: “And thought it is a fancy to/ Speculate, it’s thus we like to speak” (438) The pronoun “we” refers to the community of poets who “like to speak” in a particular way, using various figurative constructions and poetic devices. The conception of poetry suggested by this formalist statement may be reductive, but it is presented as a viable way of explaining how poets have traditionally attained a level of generality. The poets know that poetic comparisons and substitutions “are approximations but they touch / As near as men can through the boundaries/Rounding our senses’

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This leaves the reader under the impression that the birds are symbols of love because the author writes, “[We used] birds to stimulate [our] hearts” (Reed). Their hearts were disappearing and to gain back what they were about to lose they used birds to fill that void. However, the author decides to make a quick turn and establishes that the use of birds is no longer needed. They decided to let their birds fly into the sun, and they

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Both of these uses of figurative language and the imagery that they consist of help to paint the picture of Cao’s love of english. The tone of this passage also contributes to that. By using words such as “poetry”, “perfection”, and “astonishing” the excerpt appears light hearted and

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A paradox, or self contradictory statement, is the perfect way for the speaker to express his predicament. He does not “ deserve pleasure”, but he also “does not deserve pain” explains the speaker’s feelings of guilt and remorse for his immense fortune, while the working class can barely get by. In parallel lines in his poem, the speaker uses the words “failed” and “successful.” He uses these words so close together to demonstrate the failure he and civilization throughout history has faced in order to be

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Elizabeth Stanton states in “The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions Seneca Falls Conference” that, “ [mankind] closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself ”.Traditional values had taught society that the roles of men and women were different, giving men the upper hand in jobs, and education, making women subordinate to men. For instance, Emily Dickinson’s “ anonymity was due in large part to difficulties she would have experienced in trying to overcome prevailing attitudes about women’s proper place”. Dickinson could not reach her dream because her society at the time rejected the women who did not go with the norm of society. However today Dickinson is know as one of America’s

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The farmer encourages the chicken-eagle to affirm the words of the poem over and over again. Suddenly, he flapped his wings, with the encouragement of the farmer’s poem and enticement of his real realm, he made a little effort, then another, and off he took in the eagle’s

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This poem dramatizes that not everything is as good as it seems, no matter how much one wants it to be so. The speaker is a writer who compares and contrasts his life with one of a painter, and describes how the life of a painter is more captivating and demanding than being a writer. The speaker describes writing as being “hunched over a ring of lamplight” (Collins 3) and continues to describe the act of writing as less enthralling. As the poem progresses, the speaker’s attitude towards painting is more of a dream-like mirage while the attitude towards writing is monotonous and gloomy. The poem accentuates this general idea of painting being superior until the end, in which the speaker describes painting in a worse light, comparing it to “grasping the ledge of a window/ so as not to fall to the street below” (23-24).

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First Stanza Summary The narrator starts the poem off by stating an understanding of a caged bird’s situation. After this, the narrator details the beauty and intrigue of the bird’s surroundings such as the springing grass, bright sun, and stirring wind. However, because the bird is caged, it is not frolicking in it. The stanza finishes off the same way it started, by the narrator empathizing with the described caged bird.

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In “The Trouble with Poetry” the speaker touches on the same idea of how poetry is so forced, and how it has lost its meaning as an expression and has become more of an addiction among

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Unlike Audubon, she began her piece with the sight of the birds. We know nothing about where she was and where they were going. The piece was strictly about the sight of the birds and what it did to her. Nearly all her metaphors seemed like something could relate to from their memories: “a loosened skein [of yarn],” “shook rugs”, etc. She doesn’t seem to know much about the science of the birds or the significance of how they were flying or where they were flying to, “Each individual bird bobbed and… for no known reason except that that’s how starlings

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Lines one through seven define the free bird as one that “floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays” (Angelou) this is a representation of freedom and joy. The second and third stanza lines, eight through fourteen defines the caged bird that “stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage” (Angelou) where these words reference isolation and despair compared to the freedom in stanza one. These lines create a visual response of the bird’s environments. The third stanza is repeated at the end of the poem for prominence as it reflects the two birds are so different.

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