Yesterday, I opened with some lyrics from “California Dreaming,” and I closed with this quiz: I’ll provide a few lines from the song with a word missing, and you have to say what the word is. Here are the lines:
Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I _____ to pray (I _____ to pray)
The answer: “pretend” (Most people tend to remember hearing the word “began”)
So back to Dickinson: Yesterday I also looked at the poet’s use of the word “tree” and other woodland words. “Tree” turned up in 58 different poems; other words I checked including the following
Dirt, mud, sapling, and shrub: 1 poem each
Bush – 7 poems
Grass – 33 poems
Ground – 26 poems
The top word was flower which Dickinson included in 90 poems.
Today, I checked tree-related words:
Trunk: 0
(Dickinson used the word "trunk" once, but not as the woody base of a tree. "To pack her trunk" appears in "Were nature mortal lady.")
Sap 2
Bark 4
Branch: 4
Root: 8
Leaf: 7
(“Leaf” appears in one other poem, “’Twas the old road through pain,” but it is used to signify the page of a book.)
Leaves: 11
(The word "leaves" appears in 57 poems; however, only 11 of those pertain to trees' leaves.)
Twig: 12
For today, I thought I’d share a very ambiguous poem, “I am alive – I guess” – a poem that uses the word “branch.”
Hmm…read through the poem, and let me know what you think – is the speaker alive or – or not? There seems to be some doubt. She states she is alive. She can fog a glass with her breath – and she’s not laid out in the parlor for mourners to view (isn’t line 14 deliciously creepy?). And look at Dickinson’s use of dashes – the line-to-dash ratio is high; there are only four lines in this 28-line poem with no dashes. To me, this plenitude of dashes adds to the ambiguity.
The first stanza and Dickinson’s use of the word “branches” called to mind E. E. Cummings’ “when god lets my body be.” Of course, in that poem the speaker is alive, though conjecturing an afterlife through nature.
Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I _____ to pray (I _____ to pray)
The answer: “pretend” (Most people tend to remember hearing the word “began”)
So back to Dickinson: Yesterday I also looked at the poet’s use of the word “tree” and other woodland words. “Tree” turned up in 58 different poems; other words I checked including the following
Dirt, mud, sapling, and shrub: 1 poem each
Bush – 7 poems
Grass – 33 poems
Ground – 26 poems
The top word was flower which Dickinson included in 90 poems.
Today, I checked tree-related words:
Trunk: 0
(Dickinson used the word "trunk" once, but not as the woody base of a tree. "To pack her trunk" appears in "Were nature mortal lady.")
Sap 2
Bark 4
Branch: 4
Root: 8
Leaf: 7
(“Leaf” appears in one other poem, “’Twas the old road through pain,” but it is used to signify the page of a book.)
Leaves: 11
(The word "leaves" appears in 57 poems; however, only 11 of those pertain to trees' leaves.)
Twig: 12
For today, I thought I’d share a very ambiguous poem, “I am alive – I guess” – a poem that uses the word “branch.”
Hmm…read through the poem, and let me know what you think – is the speaker alive or – or not? There seems to be some doubt. She states she is alive. She can fog a glass with her breath – and she’s not laid out in the parlor for mourners to view (isn’t line 14 deliciously creepy?). And look at Dickinson’s use of dashes – the line-to-dash ratio is high; there are only four lines in this 28-line poem with no dashes. To me, this plenitude of dashes adds to the ambiguity.
The first stanza and Dickinson’s use of the word “branches” called to mind E. E. Cummings’ “when god lets my body be.” Of course, in that poem the speaker is alive, though conjecturing an afterlife through nature.
I mentioned Dickinson’s dashes; in Cumming’s poem, take a look at the capital letters. Of course, Cummings is known for his established but unconventional use of lower-case letters; however, in this poem, he capitalized the words “From,” “Between,” “My,” and “With.” What do you make of that?
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