Emily Dickinson - BrainPop UK
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Whatcha doin'?
00:10A ladybug who's red and black, wings would make a perfect snack.
00:16For one who has an empty pantry, I'm talkin' bout the prayin' mantee.
00:24It's, um, nice.
00:27Dear Tim and Moby, We're reading Emily Dickinson in school, but
00:31her poems are a little weird.
00:34Can you help me make sense of them?
00:36Thanks, Becca.
00:38Emily Dickinson's poetry can be mysterious, almost like a riddle.
00:42Her lines and verses are short, with a natural style that's almost chatty.
00:47These qualities give her one of the most distinctive voices in American poetry.
00:53The major poets of her day wrote epics, long pieces that tell a story.
00:58While these guys looked outward, writing about history and culture, Dickinson wrote lyrics,
01:03poems about the inner life of thoughts and feelings.
01:06Yeah, and that's not the only area where she went her own way.
01:12Women in those days were strongly encouraged to get married and raise families.
01:17And though she had offers, Dickinson never accepted them.
01:20Instead, she focused on her work, composing nearly 2,000 poems in just a few decades.
01:30On the surface, her poems are about everyday subjects.
01:33A dream she had, something she saw in the garden, an emotion she felt.
01:38But once you dig a little, there's a world of meaning waiting in those lines.
01:43Okay, listen to this one.
01:47A bird came down the walk.
01:49He did not...
01:50Oh, reading poems aloud can help you understand them.
01:55Plus you'll hear all the sounds and rhythms.
01:58In poetry, those things are just as important as the meaning.
02:02A bird came down the walk.
02:05He did not know I saw.
02:06He bit an angle worm in halves and ate the fellow raw.
02:11And then he drank a dew from a convenient grass.
02:15And then hopped sideways to the wall to let a beetle pass.
02:21This poem's meter, or rhythm, is really strong.
02:24Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
02:26That's called iambic meter, and here it sounds kind of like a bird hopping.
02:31Or maybe it's his nervous heartbeat.
02:34He glanced with rapid eyes that hurried all around.
02:38They looked like frightened beads, I thought.
02:40He stirred his velvet head.
02:44No, there's nothing cute about this bird.
02:47He's a killer who devours a worm, then washes it down with a drink.
02:51And check out that image.
02:52Eyes like frightened beads.
02:54That's a simile, a poetic comparison that uses like or as.
02:58It's also a personification, giving human qualities to an object.
03:03Beads aren't something you'd normally think of as frightened.
03:06But you can totally imagine those creepy little eyes.
03:11Let's continue, shall we?
03:13Like one in danger, cautious, I offered him a crumb.
03:17And he unrolled his feathers and rode him softer home.
03:22Yeah, it's not clear who feels more in danger, the speaker or the bird.
03:28But the tension is broken when it escapes into the sky.
03:32Notice how this stanza ends, he rode him softer home.
03:37Softer than what?
03:40Dickinson is setting us up to expect another simile.
03:44And she spends the entire last stanza making it.
03:48Then oars divide the ocean, too silver for a seam.
03:52Or butterflies, off banks of noon, leap, plashless as they swim.
03:58Whoa.
04:00We could spend an hour unpacking that.
04:04We start with a straight-up comparison.
04:07Flying is like rowing in a silvery sea, only softer.
04:12Then it's almost like the speaker gets carried away with the whole water idea.
04:18The sky transforms into a river or pond, with butterflies diving into it.
04:23The edges of this pond are made of time itself, banks of noon.
04:28It's like a dream image.
04:30It doesn't quite make sense, but it's so vivid.
04:35These last two lines are a metaphor, a more direct comparison than a simile.
04:40Flying isn't like swimming.
04:41It is swimming, through time or existence.
04:46Good ear.
04:48Once the bird's off the ground, the meter smooths out.
04:51It's still iambic, but it flows more like conversation, more like water.
04:57No, Dickinson knew that crumb and home aren't perfect rhymes.
05:02Here's an example of slant rhyme, one of her favorite devices.
05:07With slant rhyme, words only have to share similar sounds.
05:11It let Dickinson experiment with language, and it calls our attention to her choices.
05:16She wants us to notice those words.
05:20So they might hold clues to what's going on with this poem.
05:25I think it might be about a person's spiritual journey.
05:28His time on Earth is filled with suffering and fear.
05:32When he takes off, maybe that's about dying.
05:35He leaves the pain of life behind as he travels to his spiritual home.
05:40Notice how the bird is absent from the last stanza?
05:44He's been replaced by a butterfly, a clue that some change has taken place.
05:48And the language is all about stuff that leaves no trace, an oar that makes no crease in the
05:53water and a dive that makes no splash.
05:56Yeah, it's like she leaves us with a big mystery.
06:01What happens when we die?
06:03Those kinds of questions run through her work.
06:06Maybe writing poetry was her way of getting closer to an answer.
06:11It's true.
06:12She spent most of her adulthood alone.
06:14She was a recluse, rarely leaving her simple bedroom in Amherst, Massachusetts.
06:21Were you listening to that poem?
06:23I highly doubt she ever got bored.
06:26She used that space to let her imagination run free.
06:31Many of her poems are based on things she saw in her family's garden.
06:37She published just a handful of poems in local papers.
06:40We're really lucky to have the rest of them.
06:44Before she died, Emily made her sister promise to burn her letters.
06:49So in 1886, that's just what Lavinia Dickinson did.
06:54Well, she had to keep her word.
06:58But Lavinia also found a locked chest in her sister's room.
07:02Inside were 40 handmade booklets filled with poetry.
07:06Lavinia became obsessed with publishing them.
07:10The first volume came out four years later and was an instant success.
07:15It went through 11 printings, and critics loved it.
07:20She was immediately recognized as a major American poet.
07:23And her voice feels just as fresh today as it did back in 1890.
07:29Do what?
07:31Oh, okay.
07:34I could also burn them right now.
07:36Are you sure you don't want me to burn them now?
07:43I just meant that you'll probably outlive me.