Whitman's Preface Leaves of Grass

I didn't really fully understand what he was trying to say.

Walt Whitman said that America was a “poem” and itself was essentially the greatest poem. He tried to make America more unique and unite nation. I think at that time America was in a divided nation because of the problem of race. He attempted to make America an equal nation with justice and liberty.

The Significance of Emily Dickinson

There are significance of Emily Dickinson. Her joy and pain, triump and disaster are recorded in the words. Her niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi said,"Her letters are record of her external life, her poems are the journal of her mind and soul.

From this article, I found out Emily actually was well acquainted with her quick wit and captivating humor around the neighborhood when she was a little. People say she spent her life in the seclusion of a world, but actually she was closed to her intimate friends.

Dominant in her nature poems is the friendly spirit. Her poetry was mainly on life, nature, love, time and eternity. She has no fear of death and mortality, and joy was in her life. The pathos of her love is evident in the way she treasures memories of the past.

The reader of Emily Dickinson's poems is soon aware of an uplifting effect received from them; she writes with conviction and persuasion.

The Significance of Emily Dickinson

Donald F. Connors

College English, Vol.3, No.7(Apr.,1942),pp.624-633

Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

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The title of chapter twenty-three is “The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter.” I think that Dimmesdale will expose his sin to the townspeople. Chillingworth will not give up, and will follow Hester wherever she might go.

Once Dimmesdale reveals his sin, he won’t be able to live any longer because, as we saw, when he came back from the forest, he had a mental breakdown. The scarlet letter that he carved onto his chest will appall the townspeople so much, that and his body will not be able to support its weight anymore, and he will die shamefully.

After Dimmesdale dies, Hester will no longer have a reason to stay in the town and might flee to another town with Pearl, to a place that knows nothing of the scarlet letter or its wearer. I suspect that the two of them will live happily ever after.

The townspeople saw Emily Dickinson as an eccentric woman because she never went anywhere, and refused to go to church. Dickinson even hid from the visitors to the home. Dickinson liked to read and write riddles and make metaphors.

Emily Dickinson influenced the ways she thought and acted and developed her nature talent through the time, the place and even the atmosphere which was surrounded her. Some of Dickinson’s poems reveal her to be a keen and admiring observer of nature.

The Puritan background shaped her character. Dickinson spent most of her life and wrote most of her works in the Homestead.

The editor had problem revised Dickinson’s works because of her hadwriting and her untraditional punctuation. The editor didn’t name the title, instead he numbered the poems.

Dimmesdale becomes rely on Hester because she can give him confidence, mercy and forgiveness. In chapter eighteen, Dimmesdale and Pearl finally meet. Pearl embraces the nature. In the forest, the creatures, like squirrel, fox and wolf, approach her as she is a wild human child. The flower also wants to get near to Pearl.

Pearl reminds Hester’s sins. Pearl is so angry that her mother doesn’t wear her scarlet letter and she puts her hair down. As the book says, the river separates between Hester, Dimmesdale and Pearl. After Hester crosses the river, she puts her scarlet letter back, and returns to the original mother who Pearl knows.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,---did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

This poem examines the one of nature’s creature, snake. Emily Dickinson never tell us this creature is snake. She describes snake as a human being by using the term fellow and “Nature’s People.” The snake passes swiftly, and divides the grass. Dickinson focuses on the snake’s appearance and its transient moves. In the last stanza, Dickinson describes the snake as a metaphor of great enemy of mankind.

A bird came down the walk by Emily Dickinson

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

The bird acts naturally in front of Dickinson, and he shows his wilderness by eating a “raw” worm. This action is non-humanness. But, in stanza two, Dickinson describes the bird as human being. He drank a dew from a grass; it’s like he drank the water from glass. The bird also politely let the beetle pass through.

Emily Dickinson tries to contact with the bird by offering it food, but the bird flies away because her action.

This poem also talks about nature. Dickinson observes the bird’s appearance and behavior.

I taste a liquor never brewed by Emily Dickinson

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

Emily Dickinson shows her fascination by the natural phenomenon, and she thinks the nature as a source of pleasure. In the first line, Dickinson describes the liquor as Pearl which shows how precious the liquor is.

On the second stanza, “inebriate of air am I” which shows her delightfulness in communion with the beauty of nature.

In the third stanza, Dickinson said she will drink nature forever butterflies give up nectar from flowers.

In class, we discussed the difference between penance and pentinence. In the book, Dimmesdale yells passionately to Hester that he has had enough penance, but has had no pentinence. By "penance", Dimmesdale is referring to self-imposed suffering. We know that this occurs regularly. He even punishes himself physically by whipping himself in secret. However, he also says that there has been no penitence (feeling regret for one's sin(s)). Right now, he doesn't feel as though he feels sorry enough for his sin. I guess that Dimmesdale will only feel as though there has been pentinence after he confesses his wrongdoing publicly.

In chapter seventeen, Dimmesdale and Hester finally meet. They tell each other about how their lives have been in the past seven years, and conclude that Chillingworth is the worst of the three sinners. An at first reluctant Dimmesdale finally agrees to run away from the town with Hester. When Hester proposed this plan, I started wondering why she stayed in the town all those years in the first place. She could have escaped long ago and lived a better life. After taking the scarlet letter off her bosom and throwing it to the ground, Hester pins it back on her dress in the end. I think that maybe Hester wants to be with Dimmesdale, but doesn't want to discard the scarlet letter because it represents Pearl. I think it is a good idea for Dimmesdale, Hester and Pearl to escape this town for a better life. However, before doing so, I think Dimmesdale should confess to the townspeople. Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to their plan is Chillingworth. He previously told Hester that he will always be wherever she goes.

Emily Dickinson seldom left her house, and she hadn't many friends throughout her life. But, there were three people who affected her life, and they were all related in Dickinson's poems. The one who stirred the emotion of Dickinson was Reverend Charles Wadsworth. The other was the Supreme Court Judge Otis P. Lord, and editor of Springfield Republican, Samuel Bowles.

People published her works after her death. She was influenced by the poets of seventeenth-century England. Most of Dickinson's poems reflected her loneliness, and her stat of want.