Poetry of Emily Dickinson

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  Soul is innermost core of our being
  
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  Self engaged with the world but aware of eternity and human mortality
  
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  Poems were not titled when discovered
  
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    Editor used first lines as titles, do not reflect traditional capitalization
    
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  Capitalized words create emphasis on particular images
  

“Because I could not stop for Death”

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  captures the inevitability of death
  
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  suggests belief in an eternal afterlife
  
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  personification of Death as a coach driver who carries people toward their final resting place
  

“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died”

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  describes final moments between life and death
  
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  a fly, a trivial symbol of life, is what the speaker is most aware of before death
  

“There’s a certain Slant of light”

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  describes unbearable hurt that fills the soul
  
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    divine visitation send to teach the meaning of our own mortality
    
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  comes with winter when world is cold and still
  
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  describes an emotional response that resembles a medical condition unknown in her time
  
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    referred to as “cabin fever” in 19^th century
    
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    diagnosed in 1980’s as a mood disorder triggered by lack of sunlight
    
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      seasonal affective disorder (SAD)
      

“My life closed twice before its close”

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  conveys sense of pain that comes from leaving a loved on
  
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  equates departure to small death
  

“The Soul selects her own Society”

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  depicts Soul as a feminine entity, separate from and indifferent to claims on her attention
  
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  portrays Soul as choosing a single person to share her society, rejecting all others
  

“The Brain is wider than the Sky”

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  contrasts brain, as a metaphor for the soul, with the sea and sky
  
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  notion that the human soul is infinite, like God
  

“There is a solitude of space”

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  strongest solitude is solitude of inner loneliness
  

“Water, is taught by thirst”

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  comparison/contrast are useful ways to learn
  
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  we can only learn things by comparing them with very different things