I am of course overjoyed to be here today in the role of ceremonial object. There is more than the usual amount of satisfaction in receiving an honorary degree from the university that helped to form one’s erstwhile callow and ignorant mind into the thing of dubious splendor that it is today; whose professors put up with so many overdue term papers, and struggled to read one’s handwriting, of which ‘interesting’ is the best that has been said; at which one failed to learn Anglo-Saxon and somehow missed Bibliography entirely, a severe error which I trust no one present here today has committed; and at which one underwent excruciating agonies not only of soul but of body, later traced to having drunk too much coffee in the bowels of Wymilwood. …show more content…
No one has yet done a study of this, but they will, and when they start excavating and measuring the spines and arm bones of the skeletons of famous writers of the past I am sure they will find that those who wrote the longest novels, such as Dickens and Melville, also had the thickest wrists. The real reason that Emily Dickinson stuck to lyric poems with relatively few stanzas is that she had spindly fingers. You may scoff, but future research will prove me right.
But I then thought, I shouldn’t talk about writing. Few of this graduating class will wish to be writers, and those that do should by no means be encouraged. Weave a circle round them thrice, and close your eyes holy dread, because who needs the competition? What with the proliferation of Creative Writing courses, a mushroom of recent growth all but unknown in my youth, we will soon have a state of affairs in which everybody writes and nobody reads, the exact reverse of the way things were when I was composing dolorous verses in a rented cupboard on Charles Street in the early
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For example: nobody ever tells you, but did you know that when you have a baby your hair falls out? Not all of it, and not all at once, but it does fall out. It has something to do with a zinc imbalance. The good news is that it does grow back in. This only applies to girls. With boys, it falls out whether you have a baby or not, and it never grows back in; but even then there is hope. In a pinch, you can resort to quotation, a commodity which a liberal arts education teaches you to treat with respect, and I offer the following: “God only made a few perfect heads, and the rest lie covered with hair.”
Which illustrates the following point: when faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it. As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have, in the imaginative context, two versions, a positive and a negative. Blood can either be the gift of life or what comes out of you when you cut your wrists in the bathtub. Or, somewhat less drastically, if you spill your milk you’re left with a glass which is either half empty or half
Arguably, there are situations where the tone in the text betrays the author’s insistent perspective concerning writing. For instance, the author argues that a student can pass through the writing process successfully if the teacher chooses to shut up and allow the student to write. In reviewing this particular text, one may argue about the choice of words, however, the tonne also elucidates the author’s viewpoint on the involvement of teachers in the writing process. One of the questions the author has prompted but not answered is how the education system as a whole can be transformed to embrace the concept of writing being a process rather than a product. While the idea is sensible and well thought, its applicability in the education system is a challenge, which the author has not highlighted despite writing being under the umbrella of
Goodman 6 Richard Goodman English Comp II Mrs. Cravens 21 February 2018 Audience in Mind What makes a good writer? Many people have differing opinions on what makes a person a good writer, or the standard in which one can write. One of the main things to remember about writing is to always keep your audience in mind, and adjust you writing style and language accordingly.
Writing is often considered mundane and banal to some students. In fact, people have even written things down since the beginning of time. I dreaded writing until I had Mrs. Dunlap for 4th block English during my 8th grade year at Mount Juliet Middle. This is the story about how she made me the writer I am today with what I like to call ‘Write’speration.
When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done – and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process. When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin. That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft “the zero draft”–after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to discover what they have to say and how best they can say it. To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different
Lloyd schwartz’s sonnet,“In Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom,” describes the image of and the feelings evoked by Emily Dickinson's metaphoric bedroom. The author develops the description by first saying “ a chilly light pervades the empty room,” to illustrate the coldness and most likely loneliness; he then uses metaphor to compare Dickinson’s room to her personality, “ the grass outside—brittle, brown, as if it wanted to avoid the sun,” which is similar to her recluse characteristics; he also uses hyperbole when he says “Any clue—under the wide floorboards, behind the blocked entrance—to the haunted chambers of a heart?” which implies that Emily Dickinson’s heart is buried somewhere within the room; and finally, he says “finally these shadows still
In this first chapter, Lamott emphasizes the importance of writing within literature of her former students. She tells about how her students enjoy writing and would constantly seek her advice for finding people who would publish their works. In the beginning, Lamott states that she herself loves to write and gives vivid explanations about her own experiences with writing.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most influential poets of all time, and has a unique way of using literal imagery to paint a picture in the readers mind. The best poets are those that excel at using their words to create clear, concrete images and intrigue their reader. Dickinson began writing poetry around the year 1855, and prospered for another 10 years. Some of her most famous poems include “I Taste a liquor Never Brewed”, “Success is Counted Sweetest”, and “Wild nights – Wild Nights!”, all of which have influenced many aspiring writers to become poets, and show her true colors as a poet. Among her works of poetry, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, is one that resembles the frequent patterns of Dickinson’s style of
In this era, America was trying to form its own poetic identity. "...and poetic achievement was viewed as the standard by which a national culture was measured. The desire to create a distinctly American literature consequently took on a special urgency in the realm of poetry," (pg. 937). "But surely, many reasoned, a nation without its own poets and poetry could not be a real nation," (pgs. 937-938). Because of this, Daniel Whitaker "simply announced that American poetry in fact existed," (pg. 937). He was not alone in this opinion, as "so did many others view the writing of poetry as a patriotic act, a necessary part of building a new and culturally independent country," (pg. 938).
As a student and a college applicant, I'm all too familiar with answering “why” questions, and similarly, I'm positive you are very familiar with reading these “why” answers. With that in mind, I proceed steadily and courageously in the effort to make anyone reading this truly understand “Why Dickinson?”, and what this means to me. Admittedly, Dickinson appeals to me because of the academic standards and accreditations, but it goes deeper than that. I feel remorse in saying that I have not had the opportunity to visit the campus due to familial conflicts, however, I have spent countless hours reading and looking through pictures of the campus so that it almost feels as if I have been. The campus and it’s surrounding areas are utterly breathtaking, and
Born in Amherst, Massachusetts to Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, Emily began her life on December 10, 1830. Her father portrayed an important role where Emily grew up, and therefore she was able to attend Amherst Academy. There she earned 7 years of education and met inspiring figures that were draft into her writing. The inspiring folk were Leonard Humphrey, the principal at Amherst Academy, and Benjamin Franklin Newton, a family friend. After Amherst Academy, Emily became secluded at home and that is where the magic of her writing commenced.
Two literary pieces, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by, Dylan Thomas and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Dickinson and Thomas have presented two different ideas on the topic and concept of death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.
Emily Dickinson was born on December 12, 1830. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her parents are Emily Norcross Dickinson and Edward Dickinson. She had two siblings named Lavinia Norcross Dickinson and William Austin Dickinson. Lavinia is the youngest and William is the oldest. She died because of Kidney Disease on May 30, 1886. She was 55.
Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, Amherst, MA to Edward Dickinson, a Yale graduate and politician, and Emily Norcross Dickinson. She was the middle child with an older brother, William Austin Dickinson and a younger sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson. She went to school at Amherst Academy for seven years (1840–1847) and she went to Mount Holyoke College. Emily Dickinson is very well-known for her life of social seclusion. Though she is known as one the greatest poets of all time, she was not known of as a great poet during her lifetime. After she died her sister, Lavinia, found hundreds of poems Emily had written. Without these poems, American Literature would have been set back many years. She, along with Walt Whitman, is considered
Emily Dickinson spent most of her life isolated from society in her room. This isolation gave Dickinson the keys for success. Unfortunately, her fame was not in the time while she was alive. In time, Dickinson would write thousands of poems about what she observed about nature through her room window. One component of nature that she carefully observed was death and sight as well as the correlation of the two.
Michael Salvucci Mrs. Comeau English 10 Honors Death, Pain, and the Pursuit of Peace Although Emily Dickinson’s poetry is profoundly insightful, her poems have a very confinedpan of subjects and themes. Most likely due to her early life and social reclusion, Dickinson’s poetry is limited to three major subjects: death, pain, and on a somewhat lighter note, nature. Dickinson’s poetry is greatly influenced by her early life as she led an extremely secluded and pessimisticlife. In her early adult years the poet spent one year studying at female seminary, from 1847 to 1848. Dickinson’s blunt pessimistic attitude is shown in a letter, written to a friend, as she says “I am not happy…Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have