Emily Dickinson

Themes and issues

A dramatic rendering of mental states and processes

We are given an immediate, step-by-step view of the
development of these traumatic mental states. It is as if we are
watching a psychological drama, but inside the head. Consider
the dramatic stages of ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ or ‘The Soul
has Bandaged moments’. The use of first person narrative,
simple, dramatic verbs and staccato phrasing all contribute to the
orchestration of this drama.

Disturbed consciousness / fragile nature of the mind / mental suffering / depression

Seriousness and humour

Death
Re-enactment of actual death
Dickinson is fascinated by the deathbed scene, the moment
of transition from life into death. Consider ‘I heard a Fly buzz’
and study the steps in the process: the fading of the light, the
alienation or separation of the dying person from the things of life,
the negation of order, the growing lack of comprehension of the
world.
Death as alienation from the world
Death is not merely a physical or biological process, but an
alienation of the consciousness from the world; see ‘I heard a Fly
buzz’

Nature

Admiration for nature Dickinson’s attitude to nature is quite complex. On the one hand she is full
of admiration for the agility, the deftness and the beauty of nature’s creatures the flight of the
bird is awe-inspiring as he ‘unrolled his feathers/And rowed him softer home’ in ‘A Bird came
down the Walk’. The poet is moved by his beauty: ‘he stirred his Velvet Head’.
Yet she is often puzzled by it - sometimes in the savagery of nature
: “He bit an Angleworm in halves And ate the fellow, raw”
Beauty and wonder of the natural world - but still contains that morbid interest in death,

LANGUAGE

Abstract
unconventional use of punctuation, predominantly dashes and capitalisation,
Unusual viewpoints,, strange, disturbing imagery, some humour
Fragmented stanzas, lines - disjointed - seen in ‘dashes’ - what impact does that have on the
reader? E.g. reflecting bizarre states of consciousness, surreality, mental torment etc.

Bishop

Themes

Childhood
● Many of Bishop’s poems have their roots in childhood
memories, and indeed are based on her own childhood
(‘Sestina’, ‘First Death in Nova Scotia’, ‘In the Waiting Room’).

● The perspective is mostly that of adult reminiscence (‘Sestina’,

‘In the Waiting Room’), but occasionally the child’s viewpoint is
used (‘First Death in Nova Scotia’).

● The lessons of childhood are chiefly about pain and loss

(‘Sestina’, ‘First Death in Nova Scotia’, ‘In the Waiting Room’)
and about alienation from the world (‘In the Waiting Room’),
but there is also the comfort of grandparents (‘Sestina’).
Her life as the subject matter
Bishop was ‘a poet of deep subjectivity’, as Harold Bloom said. She
wrote out of her own experience, dealing with such topics as:
● Her incompleteness (‘Sestina’, ‘In the Waiting Room’)
● Her disordered life and depression (‘The Bight’)
● Alcoholism (‘The Prodigal’)
● Her childhood – of loss, sorrow and tears (‘Sestina’)
● Absence of parents (‘Sestina’), balanced by grandparents’
sympathy and support (‘Sestina’)
● Achieving adulthood and the confusion of that (‘In the Waiting
Room’)
● Travel, her wanderlust (‘Questions of Travel’)
● Her favourite places (‘At the Fishhouses’)
● Even her hobbies, such as fishing (‘The Fish’)

The domestic space

● The importance of the domestic is also a central ground in
Bishop’s poetry. Domesticity is one of the unifying principles
of life. It gives meaning to our existence (‘Filling Station’).
● The comfort of people, of domestic affections, is important
(‘Filling Station’, ‘Sestina’).
● Yet the heart of the domestic scene can sometimes be
enigmatic. This strangeness, even at the centre of the
domestic, is a powerful element in human life (‘Sestina’, ‘First
Death in Nova Scotia’, ‘In the Waiting Room’). One can be
ambushed by the strange at any time, even in the security of
the domestic scene (‘In the Waiting Room’).
● The process of domesticating is a central activity of
humanity: domesticating the land, domesticating affections,
domesticating the non-human world.

The natural world

The experience of really looking at and encountering the

natural is central to her poetic process (‘The Fish’, ‘Questions
of Travel’).
 Adrienne Rich
Overview of key elements

Power and language

● The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room
● Our Whole Life
● Trying to Talk with a Man
Power and women
● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
● Living in Sin
● Our Whole Life
● Trying to Talk with a Man
● Diving into the Wreck
● From a Survivor
● Power
Impending revolution and change
● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
● The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room
● Storm Warnings
● Diving into the Wreck
● From a Survivor

Rich’s portrayal of the female role in society

● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
● Living in Sin
● The Roofwalker
● Our Whole Life
● Trying to Talk with a Man
● Diving into the Wreck
● From a Survivor
● Power

Rich’s portrayal of the male role in society

● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
● The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room
● Living in Sin
● The Roofwalker
● Our Whole Life
● Trying to Talk with a Man
● From a Survivor
Rich’s portrayal of the relationship between men
and women
● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
● Living in Sin
● Our Whole Life

Rich’s use of the dramatic lyric form

● Storm Warnings
● The Roofwalker
● Trying to Talk with a Man
● Diving into the Wreck
● From a Survivor
● Power

Rich’s use of the ‘stream of consciousness’

technique
● The Roofwalker
● Our Whole Life
● Trying to Talk with a Man
● Diving into the Wreck
● From a Survivor
● Power
Rich’s early ‘male-influenced’ poems ‘about
experiences’
● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
● The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room
● Storm Warnings
Rich’s later ‘female-centred’ poems that ‘are
experiences’

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ is made up of three stanzas, each of four lines. The rhyme scheme is
tight and regular: aabb ccdd eeff.
Rich’s skilful use of her vocabulary merits careful reading, as she invests a considerable depth
of meaning and implication into her use of colour, nouns and verbs. Rich also uses the sounds
of her words most effectively, to reinforce the images that she creates. So, the alliteration
(where two or more words close together begin with the same letter) in the words ‘fingers
fluttering’ (line 5) emphasises the nervous anxiety of Aunt Jennifer. Similarly,
the alliteration of ‘prancing, proud’ (line 12) conveys the assured certainty of the tigers.

The verbs that Rich uses

to describe the tigers, ‘prance’ and ‘pace’, indicate that these
creatures are totally free in their surroundings. They are masters
of their territory who fear nothing,

The opening stanza effectively conveys key elements that reappear throughout the poem : the
colour gold, the concepts of freedom and power and the image of the male figure.

By way of contrast, Aunt Jennifer’s movements suggest anxiety and nervousness. Her hands
‘flutter’ like panic-stricken little birds. They are so delicate, so lacking in
physical strength, that her fingers have difficulty with the ivory
needle that she is using to embroider the picture. Unlike the tigers,
Aunt Jennifer is struggling to cope with her environment.

The fact that the needle is made of ivory

is significant, since man obtains ivory by killing elephants. So, the
ivory of the needle represents man’s triumph over the strength
and freedom of the elephant

What is really weighing aunt Jennifer’s hands is her golden wedding ring. In the first stanza,
gold was associated with the beautiful, powerful, free tigers. Just as the ivory needle indicated
the subjection of the elephant, so the ring testifies to the enslavement of Aunt
Jennifer by a male figure

Even in death, the ring on her finger is an emblem of that oppression

For Aunt Jennifer, marriage forced her to yield up her own power, to surrender her
control of her life and to suppress her own feelings and wishes - Male oppression, female
repression

Imagery and themes The following are simply suggested relationships between images and
themes in this poem; you may find others in your reading:
Aunt Jennifer: ● Female ● An oppressed figure ● Unable to express herself openly ● Timid and
lacking in confidence

The tigers: ● Free ● Powerful ● Confident figures Uncle: ● Male ● The oppressor

The wedding band: ● An instrument of oppression

From A Survivor

The poignancy of this poem lies in Rich’s use of straightforward, everyday, conversational
language to express her reaction to her husband’s suicide.

Rich opens the poem with a reference to their marriage, calling it an ‘ordinary pact’. Her use of
the word ‘pact’ is significant since it suggests that, in Rich’s view, the ceremony of marriage is
like a treaty between two opposing forces - Man and woman / male agency and female
agency

She states that the marriage was doomed because of ‘the failures of the race’. In other words,
their marriage failed because of the society in which they lived

The words ‘Lucky or unlucky’ indicates the ambivalence of her feelings about her marriage

‘lucky’ in the sense that if they had known that their marriage would be destroyed by their
society, then they would never have married.

‘unlucky’, because when their marriage ended they had the dreadful emotional upset and
heartbreak that occurs with the failure of a relationship

In her use of the word ‘wastefully’, it is evident that Rich valued her late husband’s existence.
His death represents the ‘waste’ of the contribution that she clearly believes he would have
made to the development of a new and better way for all men and all women to live together.

Punctuation/meaning

Rich’s use of punctuation plays a very important part in the successful communication of
meaning in this poem. It is noticeable that she uses very little punctuation in the poem
in order to reflect her use of ‘the stream of consciousness’ technique. Here Rich’s thoughts and
feelings, largely uninterrupted by punctuation, have such immediacy and honesty that her words
are filled with a great depth and intensity of meaning

The poem ends with a celebration of the joy and freedom that comes from living a life filled with
‘amazing moments’ of possibilities
There is no full stop after the final word of the poem : In this way, Rich reinforces the
sense of endless possibilities that lead on in a never-ending and empowering process.

The final four lines introduce a more positive tone into the poem. Rich still feels a sense of loss
because Alfred is dead, but she can acknowledge the fact that she, herself, has succeeded in
embarking on the process of finding a new way of living.

Her survival is not based on her resigned acceptance of that traditional, patriarchal society.
Instead, her survival is driven by the determination to explore alternative social structures

Power

Context

Marie Curie (1867–1934), along with her husband Pierre, worked on isolating radioactive
elements from a type of uranium ore known as pitchblende. At the time, it was most unusual for
a woman to be a scientist and to engage in scientific research. The Curies isolated two
radioactive elements from the pitchblende: polonium and radium. The couple were awarded the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. Later, in 1911, Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Chemistry, making her the first person ever to win two Nobel Prizes. Unfortunately, owing to her
constant exposure to high levels of radiation, Marie developed leukaemia and died in 1934.

Structure

Rich again uses the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. Therefore, we see a varied
arrangement of the lines of poetry, ranging from a single line to clusters of lines and images that
do not immediately appear to be connected.
Minimal punctuation

//

Rich’s reference to history in the first line suggests that the present and the past are very closely
linked.

Soil - storage space for our past history

The next image, of the digger digging up an old bottle, follows on

from the first line in that the bottle is an example of one such item
that has been stored in the soil.

The mound of soil as a “living” thing

There is a sudden shift of focus in the next section of the poem,

lines 6–17, where Rich explains that she has been reading about
Marie Curie. Along with her husband, Curie worked extensively
with radioactive substances. As a result of her exposure to these
radioactive elements she began to suffer physically, eventually contributing to her sickness and
death.

The final four lines of the poem, lines 14–17, can be interpreted in
a number of ways

Spaces and lack of punctuation creates amibguity

One possible interpretation sees these lines as being related to Rich’s belief that women have
long been prevented from gaining any meaningful power by the traditional, patriarchal society
that has been dominant for much of history. The image of the bottle containing the fake
medicine that helps with ‘living on this earth’ refers to the way that this traditional social structure
has fooled women into thinking that they do have some power. Thus, the final four lines can be
seen as expressing Rich’s view that Curie, as a woman, was unable to cope with the power that
she gained because she came from a gender unused to dealing with ‘real’
power and, as a result, she was destroyed by it.

Curie’s denial that her ‘wounds’ were

caused by ‘the same source as her power’ means that Curie
refused to accept that she, as a woman, had been deeply injured, and ultimately would be
destroyed, by the same male-dominated world that had also made her famous by giving her
awards.

Kennelly

Overview of elements/general points

Darkness into light

Darkness
1. Even that most hopeful of poems ‘Begin’ has its shades of
darkness.
● An awareness of endings; that every experience ends
however well it began
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
● That loneliness is part of the human condition
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

Into Light
He asserts this irrational hope in ‘Begin’; even finding a positive
aspect to the loneliness, ‘since it perhaps is what makes us
begin’. We also find it in the forceful assertion of hope in those
famous final four lines of ‘Begin’, lines that have helped many
people out of a dark place
Celebration and transformation of the ordinary
● In the voice/consciousness of the bread
● Bread-making as an act of creation
● In the magic of the dance where his father realises his true self
● In the pageant of the queuing girls
● In ‘wonder’ everywhere: ‘begin to wonder at unknown faces/at
crying birds in the sudden rain’

Love

Celebration of Women

. Bread
● The many incarnations of woman: in the traditional role of
cook, providing the staple food of life; as artist with singleminded devotion to the perfection of
her art or craft; in the more radical role of Creator; and lover.
2. ‘Dear Autumn Girl’
● How she brings radiance to his life

Sense of awe and wonder at the world around him - everything that inspires and pours into his
poetry

Spirituality

The act of creation - be it spiritual creation, human -procreation - or creation of poetry

Personification

Often simple, conversational language

Art and imagination

Poetry as narrative, telling a story - visual, intimate, engrossing

Bread

Sensuous, somewhat romantic language of ‘This/Moulding is

more delicate/Than a first kiss,’; also in the running of ‘her fingers
through me’;

Contrasted by the violent imagery

‘Even as she slits my face/And stabs my chest.’ The violence of the creative
act (onomatopoeic sounds of ‘slits’ and ‘stabs’)

The poem celebrates woman, in a range of guises: in the traditional role of cook and housewife,
providing the staple food of life; as artist; in the more radical role of creator; and as lover. We
see the artist at work in the delicate, sensuous moulding and in the way she ‘shapes me with
her skill’. She creates the perfect circular form, ‘round and white’. Earlier, we noticed the
violence of the creative act as she ‘slits’ and ‘stabs’ in a kind of sculpturing.

The woman is definitely seen in this poem as giver of life and the bread acknowledges this:‘Now
I am re-created/By her fingers’; ‘I am nothing till…’; and ‘I came to life at her finger-ends’.
Through the woman, the bread experiences, in a sort of way, the
main stages of human life – being created and dying or perhaps
being created and procreating in turn. Either way, the bread
experiences the cycle of life.
In my way I am all that can happen to men. I came to life at her finger-ends. I will go back into
her again. Overall, this is a poem that celebrates the ordinary, the everyday, the life of bread,
that staple of life, as the main theme. But the ordinary has been utterly transformed through the
voice of the bread.

Begin

The word ‘again’ qualifies the entire poem, signalling the need for repeated beginnings every
morning, to confront life (with its joys and difficulties)

‘Every beginning is a promise’. ‘Promise’ is a strong, positive word that gives an assurance, an
explicit undertaking. Each beginning is hopeful but the awareness of its fragile, temporary
nature is faced honestly – ‘dying in dark’.

the continuity (‘bridges linking the past and future’) and the experience of passing through time
(‘old friends passing through with us still’). The latter image brings a degree of comfort and
reassurance to the concept of time

‘Begin to the loneliness that cannot end’.

Kennelly is saying that we must acknowledge the loneliness that we all experience because that
is what moves us to begin to go out of ourselves and make connections with the world and
‘begin to wonder at unknown faces/at crying birds… at branches stark… at seagulls foraging’.
Sense of wonder in the observation of ordinary things.

The ending forcefully ‘insists’ that we ‘forever begin’. Beginning is to go

on eternally. It’s not possible to be more upbeat than that. The
last word brings us back to the first, a perfect circle, symbol of
continuity - an assured statement that it’s always worth beginning again.
 Dear Autumn Girl

Sonnet form: This poem maintains the physical structure of the sonnet, with conventional
octave and sestet divisions and a patterned rhyming scheme

This sonnet first tries to capture the hectic and chaotic emotional energy of being in love.
Intense excitement of first few lines

His own world narrows in, to focus solely on her and he is forced to acknowledge the
inadequacy of words to do justice to her – ‘recognise the poverty of praise’.

The language of the first two lines carries the emotion of the experience. The musical rhyming
jingle ‘helter-skelter’

‘an islander at sea; a girl with child; a fool; a simple king ‘ - his feeling of being swept up in
emotion and chaos as a result of love - also it is about the failure of literature/poetry/writing as
inadequate

no more than a mockery of real life, masterpieces of mockery when compared to real life and
love. So what he previously considered his ‘hugest world’ becomes of little significance when
she walks ‘smiling through a room’. Hers is a casual, natural beauty: ‘your flung golden hair is
still wet’.

This sonnet is a personal and honest love poem which acknowledges the giddiness of the
experience, expresses gratitude for the excitement she has brought to his complicated and
sometimes troubled literary world, recognises her casual, natural beauty and is grateful for her
easiness of being

‘I see what is, I wonder what’s to come,’ I bless what you remember or forget’
In ‘wonder’ there is hope for the future instead of fear
 But in the end, it acknowledges the inadequacy of these words of praise.

Yeats

Overview of themes and issues

Yeats and the national question

Among the issues explored by the poet under this heading are:
● The heroic past; patriots are risk-takers, rebels, self-sacrificing
idealists who are capable of all that ‘delirium of the brave’
(‘September 1913’)
● How heroes are created, how ordinary people are changed
(‘Easter 1916’)
● The place of violence in the process of political change; the
paradox of the ‘terrible beauty’ (‘September 1913’, ‘Easter
1916’, ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’)
history, time and change

The yearning for changelessness and immortality (‘The Wild

Swans at Coole’, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’)

Conflicts of human nature

The search for wisdom and peace, which is not satisfied here
(‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’)
● A persistent sense of loss or failure; loss of youth and passion
(‘The Wild Swans at Coole’);

Lake Isle of Innisfree

 Comfort in, and beauty of, nature and the natural world

Self-sufficiency in nature obviously pervades this whole poem.

‘Clay and wattles’ were the traditional rural building materials in centuries past.

A romantic view of the human being in perfect harmony with nature, at one with its sights and
sounds.
However, there is a beautiful, unreal quality to some descriptions
The light is different: noon is a ‘purple glow’. The archaic language in the expression of
‘midnight’s all a glimmer’ reinforces the strange, even magical nature of the atmosphere.
Almost comparable to a fairytale image

Yeats chooses the simple, rhythmic, calming sound of lake water lapping and also the repetitive,
rustic sounds of the cricket

It is a picture full of the rich textures of colour, sound and movement, in total contrast to his
present environment, that of the cold, colourless and lifeless ‘pavements grey’.

Unspoiled nature vs the dull urban conditions of the city

An expression of Yeats’s romanticised and nostalgic yearning for his native countryside.

We can sense the strength of his resolve in the verbs ‘I will arise’ and ‘I shall have’ - his
yearning to shake off the pressures of a urban confines and find a way back to a sacred natural
place

Issues
Among the issues that preoccupy the poet here, we might
emphasise:
● The yearning for self-sufficiency in natural surroundings
● The search for truth, wisdom and peace
● The poet’s discontent, which impels him on this quest.
 Easter 1916

A reading of the poem

Though on the surface it may not appear to be a questioning poem, this work is really an
attempt to answer or clarify a great number of questions that the 1916 Rising stirred up in
Yeats’s mind, an attempt to come to terms with:
● How everything had changed.
● How wrong he had been.
● How ordinary people had been changed into heroes.
● The deep structure of change in society, the mysterious
process, a kind of fate that directed and powered change

He confesses to his own unpleasant, condescending mockery (‘a mocking tale or a gibe’) and
his belief that all the pre-1916 organising was mere comical posturing: Being certain that they
and I But lived where motley is worn

Yeats remembers the key Irish figures of the period as he views them: Constance Markiewicz
wasted her time in misplaced volunteer work (‘ignorant goodwill’) and became a shrill fanatic
(‘nights in argument … voice grew shrill’); he thought MacBride was a ‘drunken, vainglorious
lout’ who ‘had done most bitter wrong’ to Maud Gonne and Iseult. These are ordinary, fallible,
flawed and unlikely heroes.
The reference to “motley,” the clothes of a jester, shows that Yeats originally saw them as comic
figures.
MacBride ‘has been changed in his turn’. He waited his ‘turn’ – a reference to the executions of
the rebels by the British. Is Yeats saying that it was the executions that effected this change,
transformed everyone utterly, and gave birth to this ‘terrible beauty’?

This utter transformation of the social and historical reality is imagined as a new birth, but Yeats
is so disturbed and confused by it that he can only describe it in
paradoxical terms as a ‘terrible beauty’ –

The first two stanzas end by saying that the rebels have been changed or transformed, that “a
terrible beauty is born.” The terror is the high price the rebels had to pay for seeking Ireland’s
freedom; it refers to their deaths, and the deaths of many others in the violence. But at the same
time, this beauty refers to the heroism the rebels revealed in being willing to die for this cause.

But ultimately, the speaker’s admiration for the rebels overcomes his criticisms.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker asks whether this high cost was truly necessary: “was it
needless death after all?” It is possible that England would have granted Ireland freedom
without this rebellion.

Regardless of their flaws of judgment or character, it is enough to make them heroic that they
were willing to die for their cause. The speaker honors the rebels as heroes by listing out their
names in the final lines of the poem and affirming again how they have been “changed utterly.”

They have been transformed from people the speaker criticized to people the speaker must
admire forever

‘I write it out in a verse –

MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.’
Wild Swans at Coole

The personal loss of youth, passion and love

● The consequences of ageing
● The passage of time and the yearning for changelessness and
immortality
● The loss of poetic power and vision – the sense of failure

Youth vs old age

Ideal state vs reality

Nature vs humanity

The poem begins by signaling that the speaker feels himself to be in the “autumn” of his life.

The swans remind him of his lost youth - his hopes and dreams—“passion or conquest”—have
passed him by

The fragility of human life, compared to the apparent agelessness of the swans

Back then, the speaker walked with “a lighter tread”; now his age and life experiences make him
metaphorically heavier and slower. This, of course, juxtaposes with the ever-present grace of
the swans, which, again, appears the same now to the speaker as it was when he virst visited
Coole in his youth

They also seem free to “wander where they will,” and remain “mysterious, beautiful”, unlike the
speaker, who is now old and weary

Nature in the poem is presented as something that is unchanging in its beauty and majesty. This
creates a sense of division between the world of nature and that of human beings, which, as
represented by the speaker, is acutely aware of the passage of time and plagued by a sense of
loss. Nature also seems untroubled by—perhaps even entirely indifferent to—human foibles, the
swans continuing to appear full of passion and vigor even as the speaker is weighed down by
the hopes, dreams, and disappointments that people experience in life.

The poem is about an individual struggling to come to terms with his own mortality, his life, the
passage of time - the swans trigger the memories of the joys, hope, and the promise of his lost
youth

Corrector’s Use of Marking Scheme (a useful breakdown of key elements)

P- Clarity of Purpose - Consistently focused on the terms of the question, relevant points,
terms explained and explored, well-illustrated opinions

C - Coherence of Delivery - well-organised, focused introduction, separate treatment of distinct

points , good paragraphing, fluid links between paragraphs, smooth development of argument,
clear conclusion

L - Efficiency of Language Use - Accurate expression, appropriate vocabulary, effective

discursive register, impressive vocabulary and terminology

M - Mechanics - devoid of spelling or grammatical errors