Emily Dickinson's poetry: deceptively simple OR simply deceptive? Why Can't it be Both?

Emily Dickinson's poetry: deceptively simple OR simply deceptive?  This is an excellent question to ask, and, for me, it depends on the poem.  The beauty in the way she writes is simple.  #340 has amazing imagery throughout it.  “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, / And Mourners to and fro / Kept treading - treading - till it seemed / That Sense was break through -“ That line is so rich for me; yet, what does it mean? Is she talking about having a breakdown, or becoming crazy?  Or is she writing about actually dying?  The end of this poem isn’t much better.  “And then a Plank in Reason broke, / and I dropped down, and down - / And hit a World, at every plunge, / And Finished knowing - then -.”  Has the person become completely insane, or are they for real dead now?

A poem that is deceptively simple is number 1108.  The meaning of the poem seems simple enough to understand; yet, if you’ve read any Emily Dickinson, it feels like it shouldn’t be that simple!  In this poem, Dickinson talks about what happens after a funeral.  After a loved one dies, “The Morning after Death / Is solemnest of industries” and that the person is “...Sweeping up the Heart / And putting Love away / We shall not want to use again / Until Eternity –“.  A person, after losing someone, tries to move on with their life.  As harsh as it sounds, Dickinson is saying that in order to do that, the love you felt for the deceased must be put aside, or swept up, until they  meet again in death. 

All in all, Dickinson didn’t just write either deceptively simple or simply deceptive.  She wrote poetry that is easier to understand than others.  If I absolutely had to pick a side, I would say simply deceptive, because try as I might, I can’t understand a lot of her poetry.  In the end though, it all has beautiful qualities to it, and is fun to read.

Whitman Wednesday Blog Post

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself is, at first glance, a daunting read to attempt.  With 52 strophes of Whitman talking about what feels like everything, it would be easy to throw in the towel.  However, there is beauty in all of the strophes, if you look for it. 

            One strophe I found compelling was number 7.  I believe Whitman could have stopped after the first stanza: “Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? / I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.”  The rest of the stanza only solidifies his point.  He uses certain word stresses to point out the important.  The use of alliteration for “death with the dying” and “birth with the new-wash’d babe” makes the reader sit up and hear that line.  The beauty of life, to experience everything from being a child to loving someone, is because it does not last forever; it ends when we die.  This makes life more beautiful than it would be if we were immortal.

            The other strophe that stood out to me was number 18.  I liked this one because it was about music (hey, I’m a music major!).  I think the idea of celebrating those who lost was beautiful.  In history books, we only glorify the great warriors and heroes, those who make a name for themselves.  The people who die on the battlefield without their names known were just as brave.  The alliteration he repeats in this strophe is “sank in the sea!”  He also rhymes the words “slain” and “gain”, which is a good point to make about the topic he is discussing in this strophe: in order to gain in wars, there will always be those slain.  The last line encompasses it all.  “And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!”

            Overall, Whitman speaks about many things in Song of Myself, but each strophe speaks beautifully and eloquently of the topic.  He talks about things that many people don’t, like death being a good thing, and celebrating the unknown soldiers.  These strophes in particular stood out to me, and made me smile.

Douglass and Overseers: The Good, the Bad, and the Creepily Cruel

            Douglass describes quite a few different slave drivers.  There are two masters he talks about, Captain Anthony and Colonel Lloyd.  Captain Anthony was not a nice master; he was cruel and inhumane.  He took pleasure in whipping his slaves, in particular an Aunt of Douglass that he remembers.  Captain Anthony’s overseer is Mr. Plummer.  He is described as “a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster.”  He, too, loved to whip the slaves, and always carried a cowskin and heavy cudgel.  Colonel Lloyd’s plantation went through a few different overseers.  The first described is Mr. Severe, aptly named.  “He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity.”  He died soon after Douglass was sold to Colonel Lloyd, and he was replaced by Mr. Hopkins, who Douglass said was “less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr. Severe.”  After Mr. Hopkins was Mr. Austin Gore, who was the worst described.  “He was cruel enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice of a reproving conscience.  He was, of all the overseers, the most dreaded by slaves.”

            Douglass shows different ranges of overseers, from Mr. Hopkins, who was the least severe, to Mr. Austin Gore, who was the cruelest.  He never says why he shows this range of overseers, but it could be that he wanted people to know that not everybody was disgustingly cruel to the slaves.  Mr. Hopkins did whip the slaves, but he took no pleasure in it.  It also, when putting the experiences with Mr. Hopkins next to the experiences of Mr. Austin Gore and Mr. Severe, really reveals just how horrible the actions of the two latter overseers were.  It shows the range of people in general from that time period, and helps the readers understand what it was like to be a slave for these ever-changing overseers.

My Thoreauian Experience with Lindeman Pond

            Shrouded in mystery here on campus is the case of Lindeman Pond; when did it come into being?  What is the purpose of the pond?  Who enjoys it?  As a true seeker of knowledge (but mostly because it was an assignment) I decided to find out.  My method of finding out: the internet.  Google is one of the top search engines used today; surely it will reveal the answers to my questions, right? Wrong.  Google has only the ability to pull up pictures from Flickr.com of beautiful days on Lindeman Pond.  Beautiful pictures, but no info on why Lindeman Pond is.  The Library research page was next on my list of potential sources.  A library is where you go for information, and the library located on the same exact campus as the pond?  This must have the knowledge I seek.  Except it doesn’t.  There is no information about Lindeman Pond anywhere.  Feeling discouraged, I go to the last place I believe will have the information I need to write this blog post.  Luther.edu.  Luther.edu has a vast wealth of knowledge located in its many pages.  One must simply find the correct words to submit to the search box at the top of the page.  And I found them: “Lindeman Pond.”  Up comes the search results, and I finally find information about this mysterious pond.  In fact, I find two whole sentences about the pond:   “Lindeman Pond is one of several ponds on campus used by students in biology courses. The pond has painted turtles, spring peepers, and bluegill, as well as microscopic organisms studied by microbiology students.”  These two sentences tell me a few new things.  There are more ponds here on campus?  Students go down to this pond for class?  There are fish in the pond?  But alas, they do not answer any of the questions I needed to complete this blog post.  In the end, I must infer its usage.  It takes the Frisbees that people play with on the disk golf course.  It is a place where people can play broom ball in the winter.  It creates a beautiful view from my Dieseth 4^th window.  I think it makes sure that Towers doesn’t come tumbling down during rainstorms because it’s where the runoff water from upper campus flows to.  Clearly Luther students need not know the purpose of the pond, and thus the mystery remains unsolved.
           
            Today was an interesting day to walk down to Lindeman Pond, because it was the first snow of the year.  As a firm believer that winter should last from December 23^rd through December 31^st, and due to the fact that I have a cold and an ear infection, I was not thrilled to be walking outside in this.  I started by looking at the pond from my Dieseth 4^th window.  The view from above creates a certain feeling about the pond.  There aren’t any leaves on the trees; they’re all along the sides of the pond.  Through the dead looking trees you can see the ropes course on the other side.  Everything is brown, with a light dusting of snow.  Going down to the pond, the sights change as you become level with the pond instead of above it.  The water ripples with the whipping wind.  Everything appears either brown or grey, depending on if you look at the nature or the sky.  When you look at the pond, you can see the reflection of the trees and sky; the grey is muted in the pond.  I can’t see through the water, but I know that there are fish swimming, turtles plodding, and a plethora of Frisbees (one being mine from earlier in the year) that students have lost while playing the disk golf course.  Everything starts to feel cold the longer I’m out there.  For a while, I can close my eyes and pretend I’m out in the middle of nowhere by a pond by myself, but soon the cars going by kills that feeling.  The cars remind me of Thoreau’s comments about hearing the trains and their whistles, except I can see the cars.  Unlike Thoreau, I’m not completely alone; there are workers under Towers, and people walking to their cars.  In the end, I don’t really equate a visit to Lindeman Pond to Thoreau’s stay at Walden Pond.  Going down four and a half flights of stairs and then across a road isn’t the same as going out into the wilderness for an extended period of time by myself.  As I walk away from Lindeman Pond, I try and imagine staying out there for a year or two, living in a small cabin by myself, with only the animals and fish for company.  Thoreau learned many ideas through his time at Walden Pond, but I believe that he was open to learning them, and I am not.  I prefer warm, dry places with social interactions.  I’m glad he did it and I could read what he learned, instead of having to try it myself.

 

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

     With a quote like “Art is the path of the creator to his work” from Emerson, of course a painting of nature seemed only fitting to be tagged to it.  This poster captures the spirit of Emerson through a few ideas.  One is that looking is important; nature is about looking.  In this picture, the viewer has many things to see, and it takes a while for the viewer to see it all.  At first they see the trees and the path, green and orange.  In the distance there’s a house, and then a lake and mountains behind that. The pops of color amidst the green of the foreground really come to life when the viewer looks at the painting.  Looking closely at the pathway, you can see that it is jagged and rough; it would be easy to trip on.  There are layers to how we see things, especially with nature, and this is evident in this painting.  The longer you look at it, the more you see.  The reason I chose this painting to accompany this quote was because of the literal idea behind it; the painter’s art was the path to his work, and he painted a pathway in his art.  However, this quote loses some of the complexity of its context when it is taken out of the rest of the paragraph.  It goes on to talk about how these paths are “ideal and eternal,” and yet most men don’t see them, including the artist himself.  Artists create work that they believe is the end result; they don’t realize that their art is just part of their pathway to their end destination.  This idea is lost with this poster.