William Carlos Williams' This is Just to Say Essay

To begin with, the meaning of literature to me is way for the author to express a fictional or non-fictional story. Lyric poetry are a type of poem that express emotional feelings in the present tense. The majority of the time lyric poems rhyme but they are not required to. The Lyric poem “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women” written by Aemilia Lanyer is a beautiful lyrical poem that demonstrates what every lyrical poem should include. All lyric poems depend on some type of meters(the rhythm of the poem)

Nonetheless, my chosen work has multiple facets to this period. In the poem “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes—“, Dickenson has an emotional proposition. I believe that when she mentions her pain, it is heartache and something that can't be physically seen. When Dickinson says “A Wooden way regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone" (7-9), she is referring to the feeling that she has deep within that no one can help with. The pain that she is enduring is so terrible that she literally can’t take it anymore, so her heart goes numb. I feel that with the piece of poetry being a part of the Romanticism, it is rejecting a dark and gothic emotional ambience, with a tone that is gloomy or even pessimistic. Dickinson uses imagery in her words to get the reader to empathize with her pain. Her words draw emotions across your eyes that can help you better understand the true meaning of the poem. This piece of work resembles the Romanticism by Dickinson focusing on her own hurt. As a replacement of her using a cause and effect method to present her physical suffering, she focuses on declaring her pain through each

Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” is a short poem about the struggles and hard transition of getting over the heartbreaking feelings that come after a great tragedy in one’s life such as losing someone; a friend, a lover etcetera. In a sense, this poem is very general, yet it cannot be applied to just any situation. It is general in the sense that those who have gone through such feelings of pain and lose know exactly what kind of “numbness” and hollow that Dickinson writes about; the feeling of not wanting or caring about what life has to offer anymore for a time once the “great pain” has first occurred and how hard it becomes to continue daily tasks, activities and routines. This poem is specifically about confronting the pain and making sense of it, and understanding that a great pain is a very

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition, The. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2000.

The last two lines of the poem are a timid reflection on what might happen “Had I the Art to stun myself/ With Bolts—of Melody!” (23-24). The idea that creation is a power that can get loose and injure even the creator illuminates why in this poem the artist positions herself firmly as a mere spectator. In these first two poems, we meet a Dickinson who is not entirely familiar to us—even though we are accustomed to her strong desire for privacy, these poems can be startling in the way they reveal the intensity of Dickinson’s fears. She is, after all, shrinking from what is dearest to her—nature, one of her favorite subjects, becomes a harsh judge, and poetry, her favored medium of communication, can suddenly render the reader “impotent” and the writer “stun[ned]” (19, 23). The extremity of her positions in shrinking from the small and beautiful things she loves creates the sense that this is just the beginning of a journey by leaving so much room for change.

In the poem, “After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes”, Emily Dickenuses uses various literary and poetic devices that add to the meaning and moral of the poem. For example, Dickinson uses simile in the poem when she says “A quartz contentment , like a stone”. Here, Emily compares contentment to a quartz stone, which is a very hard stone. This simile means that the hurt person feels content because their feelings are so hard and numb that they can not feel pain anymore. Therefore, they feel contentment as a result of the numbness.

• Before: Can anyone explain what a poem is and how it is different from other types of books?

Francis Manley’s “An Explication of Dickinson's 'After Great Pain'." main point is centered around when it is thought that Dickinson experienced some deep and extremely traumatic event, and the poem “After Great Pain” is about that traumatic experience. Manley points out how Dickinson’s personifies different parts of the human body. Manley states that the personification is to “demonstrate the numbness” (Manley 261) she feels emotionally. The personification used is of the heart and nerves, all of which are things that can represent emotion. I can use this to my advantage to show that possibly the great pain Dickinson has felt is Lost love.

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 Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death,” there is much impression in the tone, in symbols, and in the use of imagery that exudes creativity. One might undoubtedly agree to an eerie, haunting, if not frightening, tone in Dickinson’s poem. Dickinson uses controlling adjectives—“slowly” and “passed”—to create a tone that seems rather placid. For example, “We slowly drove—He knew no haste / …We passed the School … / We passed the Setting Sun—,” sets a slow, quiet, calm, and dreamy atmosphere (5, 9, 11,

Prompt: Write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the poem's organization, diction, and figurative language prepare the reader for the speaker's concluding response.

BibliographyAgnes, Michael, ed. Webster's New World College Dictionary. 4th ed. Foster City: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 2001.

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“is a profound portrayal of the debilitating process of grief human beings undergo when confronted with a horrific tragedy. The response to that ultimate pain is the predominance of numbness, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-“(1-2). This is a poem that must be read slowly to become saturated in the melancholy, the dehumanization of suffering as it affects each aspect of the body without reference to the chaotic emotionality of it. The abundance of metaphors within Dickinson’s poem provides the means to empathize the necessity of numbness. It is also through the use of punctuation and capitalization, depicting the presence of a

Poetry is about the emotions or feeling of a person. Poetry always follows a rhythm to keep the poem organized. The words used in poetry are always specific whether they are good or bad words. People may decide to write poetry because they can freely choose their own words without caring about the reader’s reaction. Although, Poetry is mostly interesting to read, it can sometimes end up being a shock to the readers.

This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.