Emily Dickinson's "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain"

Just some thoughts our group talked about when discussing the poem.

• the poem is in hymn meter (alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter) which is related to Dickinson's religious fervor
• the first two stanzas are a progression up to the key third stanza, then there is a sharp contrast between the silence of the fourth stanza and the violence of the last
• the last two lines of the fourth stanza ("And I, and Silence, some strange Race,/Wrecked, solitary, here -") plays into the violence that starts the last stanza ("And then a Plank in Reason, broke,")
• the first two and last two stanzas both end with pauses, meaning that the end of the poem is in fact a long pause--this leaves the reader feeling abandoned and slows the line down
• there is a caesura in the last line of the third stanza ("Then Space - began to toll"), which echoes the sentiment that after the word space we as readers generally want space before starting again
• the form of the poem itself is a march downwards, just like the content of the poem involves the marching of the funeral towards death
• there are very few instances when Dickinson breaks the iambic foot-- two lines involving trochees ("Then Space - began to toll" and "Wrecked, solitary, here -") have the emphasis on the first syllable to illustrate the sense that everything is breaking down the closer the reader gets to the end of the poem, when everything ends

Practical Criticism

We'll be discussing the limitations of New Criticism vs. a more historical approach tomorrow in class. Meanwhile, I'd like you to think about your own scholarly tendencies and reflect on the type of education you've received thus far from different English lecturers at Columbia.

Please check out the following link below when you have time, and click especially on the Cambridge Practical Criticism Class, so that we can reconvene and share about the initial experience of cold close reading.

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/classroom/pracrit.htm

OED: Mystery

We did the OED essay prompt of Mystery in "The Canonization". There are three distinct definitions of the word 'mystery' and each comes with its own interpretation. This essay seeks to show how a different definition of one word can change the entire meaning of the poem.

The first definition of 'mystery' we used was the religious definition, which tied into Christian theology. The Mysteries is the imprint of Christ on the society and our world, and to a certain extent this poem is also an imprint of the lovers on the world. It also refers to the Eucharist, of the body of Christ being transferred from a piece of bread into ourselves. It highlights the un-importance of the physical body and emphasizes the spiritual., which flows nicely with the imagery of the poem flowing from flies to a phoenix.

The word mystery comes from ministry, and this definition refers to a position or office or skill. In the beginning of the poem the lovers are being ostracized or criticized by society, but by the end they are being invoked as saints of love. Their love, which at the beginning causes them trouble, also earns them a permanent place in their society. This definition can also refer to Donne's own life where he is searching for an office in society and through this poem he is canonizing himself.

The final definition is the most common and widely-used. Mystery is defined as a shroud or obscures knowledge. In a way the poem shrouds or obscures the lovers from the rest of the world. This definition also refers to the lines about a 'well-wrought urn', because an urn is itself a mysterious vessel because you can not see what is inside of it. In the poem the lovers also build rooms meant to shroud and protect them.

In conclusion, it is clear that there are multiple interpretations of the poem stemming from one word.

Sample Idea for the OED paper

The word relic as used by John Donne in his Poem “The Relic”

1. The poem’s satirical and critical quality is enhanced through use of the word, relic.

a. When defined as the physical remains of a saint, martyr or other deceased person, the poem can be seen is as a slight at the church’s as due to his invocation of Mary Magdelen in the line that follows.

b. Defined as surviving trace of some practice or idea, the relic of two lovers becomes a critique on society and possibility of love becoming a lost idea. The definition of the relic in this sense also is a shot at men and not women, as “all women shall adore us and some men.” Men control society and love being a relic in this sense is better appreciated by women only some men because it is men that are in power.

c. The definition of a relic as a remnant after destruction also supports the idea mentioned above. It also makes the poem a scathing critique of all parties mentioned in the poem as they are source of the destruction causing the loving couple to become relics.

d. Depending on how one decides to define the relic as used by Donne, the poem can range from mildly amusing to controversial.

Mortality in Donne's Canonization

A subtle sense of panic permeates Donne's Canonization, in the guise of a meditation on mortality and the transient nature of relationships. The religious overtones of canonization itself are difficult to ignore, as well as the opening line's invocation of blasphemy (as discussed in class) which, by the poem's end, gives way to a veritable appeal to holy authorities (worldly or otherwise) to accept coarse earthly love as something sacred. In the course of the poem, Donne's gaze shifts from one of renunciation of holiness (and indeed, the historical context of Donne's stance of religious authority is palpable) to a different kind of renunciation; that of the grandiose and worldly. In memorializing corporeal love, the poem validates man's brief existence, and the urge to somehow be memorialized.

-Will

Response to Donne's "The Canonization"

This week we had to read (again) John Donne's "The Canonization," in addition to some of his letters and the other text. In class last Wednesday Professor Crawford concentrated on Donne's comparison of love to the phoenix and how, among other ideas, this implies permanence, or perpetuity. Another article I noticed in rereading the poem is the mention of authority, which arises in different forms. In the first stanza, for example, Donne likens the improvement of the mind by art to the improvement of a state with wealth: "With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve." Other authoritative figures crop up throughout: there is the king and his "stamp'd face" exhibited on coins, there are soldiers, lawyers, and, in the last stanza, courts.

What do these contribute to the poem, if anything at all? Perhaps these varying representations of power embody the society that the speaker begs to, if not recognize, than to at least let live his love. This is revealed right off the bat in the first line: "For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love." Society is superior to the poet, and so the poem deals with the disparity, and the desired resolution, between the public and private life.

Finding the Poetic in the Prosaic

Brookes touches on the poet’s ability to use paradox in conveying meaning. The innate ability to find the uniqueness of the seemingly mundane is one such paradox. Writers such as William Wordsworth made great strides in showing “the common was really uncommon, the prosaic was really poetic.” This skill is one utilized not only by Wordsworth, but poets and playwrights around him and in preceding years (Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and John Donne to name a few). It also appears in modernist's works, such as Frank O’Hara.

Below are two poems. Brookes discussed one poem in our reading and the other I picked from a collection of poetry by Emily Dickinson. Can you detect where the poets may have used the “language of paradox” to convey meaning? How are the tools they use similar, or different?

Emily Dickinson
"Nature" is what we see —

"Nature" is what we see —
The Hill — the Afternoon —
Squirrel — Eclipse — the Bumble bee —
Nay — Nature is Heaven —
Nature is what we hear —
The Bobolink — the Sea —
Thunder — the Cricket —
Nay — Nature is Harmony —
Nature is what we know —
Yet have no art to say —
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

William Wordsworth
"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802"

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Billy Collins-Intro to Poetry

Billy Collins' "Introduction to Poetry" carries a message reflective of its era. In the mid-20th century, Bertolt Brecht championed what he called the distancing effect, deliberately blocking reader immersion and forcing more critical engagement with texts. (This was a considerable break from Romantic or Expressionist traditions.) Collins takes a similar approach, albeit in a didactic way, in this poem, contemplating the experiential reading of poetry. The reader is guided through Collins' metaphors for absorbing poems, which are alternately scientific and natural as discussed in class, but ultimately these are all metaphors of standing apart from an object. Whether holding a poem up to the light, dropping a mouse down into a poem, fumbling into its room or waterskiing across it, it defines a distinct separation between reader and text. The final turn comes in the last lines, when the distance at which the poem is held is forced through by clumsy readers and instructors. Forcing this more critical engagement changes the fundamental experience of reading poetry.

-Will

Sailing to Byzantium

In "Sailing to Byzantium, Yeats, cognizant of his impending death, muses on what really lasts. In order to figure that out, he leaves what is "no country for old men" (1), a place where "caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect" (7-8). The enjambment which carries line seven into eight underlines how these people are "caught" up in sensual music; that is, they don't have time to pause and explore the intellectual feats that Yeats believes actually last. In seven and eight, he rhymes "neglect" with "intellect" in order to further highlight this.

So he's going to Byzantium, an ancient cultural center, and begs some "sages" to "gather me / into the artifice of eternity" (15-16), again stressing that eternity is artificial, literally made by man. And to further the point he rhymes "me" with "eternity."

In the last stanza, he recognizes that he can't take anything from this life to the next. Rather he'll leave behind " such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make" (27) which have lasted, if not through eternity, beyond two millennia. In the last line, he stresses only "past," "pass" in "passing" and "come," because as far as Yeats is concerned, if something doesn't last, it doesn't matter.

-Conor

The Canonization

I was really interested in Donne's poem "The Canonization" because of its title and the interplay of the various meanings of the verb "canonize" in his discussion of love and the love of his unnamed lady. The first line of the poem jumps out at the reader because of its forceful and demanding tone, despite being in regular iambic pentameter: "For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love;" The caesura placed after "tongue" really brings the readers attention to the remaining words of the line, "and let me love". One is immediately left wondering why the narrator is unable to love and what force or person is stopping him. Then, as the poem continues, we see Donne defending his love. The fourth stanza, however, is of particular interest to me because here is where the reader really sees Donne's title at work within the poem. In this stanza, which begins, "We can die by it, if not live by love," Donne writes of his love and the love of his lady being "fit for verse" and meant for "sonnets pretty rooms;". To me, Donne is writing of the canonization of his love--proclaiming that their love will be canonized through verse, through poetry, and through this poem itself. When I looked at the several definitions for the word "canonize" the one that stuck out to me was "to make canonical; to admit into the Canon of scripture, or of authoritative writings". I think that Donne not only proclaims that his love will be canonized but that perhaps his poems themselves will, or should, also be. I am left wondering, however, if Donne truly is speaking solely about his love of his lady or also about his love for God, poetry, etc.?

-Devon

To His Coy Mistress

I was interested in the use of caesura in To His Coy Mistress. In the second stanza, the line the line “My echoing song; then worms shall try” was particularly interesting to me. Placing the semicolon there for an abrupt pause seemed to reinforce the narrator’s assertion that his song would no longer sound by creating an actual silence for the reader. Because the poem is about time moving too quickly, the lines have a quality of rushing by and this one was striking in how it broke that. I also noticed that in the first stanza in which the narrator elaborates on the fantasy of their love in which time is no object, the structure again reinforces the meaning by being itself uncomplicated and idyllic. Only in the second stanza when discussing reality does the narrator break the couplet structure and add elements like caesura in the seventh line.

-Leena

Lines of Iambic Pentameter:

Think up one line of iambic pentameter and post it as a comment to this post. If you get stuck, it may help to first think up a short list of several iambic words, and then try stringing them together.

Some examples off the top of my head...

1) Today I brought my dog to a buffet.

2) Beyond the churning ocean in our view,