EMILY DICKINSON

Enlightened and modern; yet a recluse

BACKGROUND

Many great writers were active people who had strange experiences, traveled

widely, and knew a lot of people. Do you think a woman who just stayed home,

hardly ever saw anyone, and only published seven poems during her lifetime could be

a great poet?

EMILY DICKINSON WAS.

Emily Dickinson was. In fact, she is considered one of the greatest

poets of the nineteenth century. She is a rather unusual person. She seldom left her

house, she never married, and she always dressed in white. But she wrote wonderful

poems about nature, love, life, and death. Her poems are short and not hard to read,

but they have deep meanings.

IF I CAN STO P O NE HEART FR OM BREAKIN G

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

I ’M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU?

I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us? Don’t tell.

They’d advertise, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!

How public-like a frog.

To tell one’s name the livelong-- June

To an admiring bog!

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHER S

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird.

That kept so many warm

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity.

INTRODUCTION

"Poetry is the human soul entire,

squeezed like a lemon or a lime,

drop by drop,

into atomic words."

--Langston Hughes

OTHER POETS

Usually poets try to do more than just explain an idea or describe a scene. They

write without the usual rules for writing sentences and don't care about logical order

like in an essay. They often try to emphasize images. They use symbolism to get us

to understand what they have to say. In some ways they reconstruct the world to

make us see things in a different way, feel in a certain manner.

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1. Do you know who she is?

2. Where and when was she born?

3. What was her life like?

4. What are the main themes in her poetry?

5. Why is she so important in American literature?

PICTURE OF EMILY DICKINSON

LET’S ANALYZE THE POEMS

Line # Rhyming Words Rhyme Pattern

IF I CO UL D STO P O NE HEART FR OM BREAKIN G

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

IF I CO UL D STO P O NE HEART FR OM BREAKIN G

1. Who is the speaker?

2. How does the writer show her love to

the weak?

3. How does Emily think of the world around her?

What is the main theme of the poetry?

ANALYSIS

Who is the speaker?

Why does the speaker use

such a disparate

comparison?

How does she think of the

world around her?

What is the theme of this

poem?

PAIR ACTIVITY

Theme

Speaker/Addressee

Repetition/Verbs/Tense

Rhetorical

DevicesImages

Language/Three Syllable words