With Emily Dickinson poems half of the time I don't understand at all whatsoever, and the other half I'm blown away with how much sense some of the poems make.
"Between 1858 and 1865, Emily Dickinson wrote over 800 poems." Sure, she was becoming more of a recluse at that time, but still, over 800 poems in seven years? Wow. And here it's been six years since I started writing my novel and I'm only on the second draft.
"The history of the United States matters to you because we're always meddling in your affairs." Never thought I would hear an American say that! More reasons to love John Green.
So do I, largely because I agree with him. I wasn't offended, but simply felt it was worth mentioning that everyone on the planet is being represented by someone they probably wouldn't even ask to check on their dog for them.
Maybe the dashes are there to allow the reader, or even Emily herself, to take in what was written. She wants us to contemplate them and not just be willing to immediately move on to the finish line. Each line is meant to be a poem unto itself as well as to be a poem of a whole. There's the individual line - expression of the individual, vs the poem as a whole - expression and interpretation of society.
'i heard a fly buzz when i died' is an extremely important poem for me. my 11th grade american literature teacher read it to our class, and the "blue" uncertain stumbling buzz of the fly made my head hurt, because the sound of a fly buzzing is brown, not blue. my teacher then threw out the term 'synesthesia' which finally gave me a name for the weirdness i always had of seeing and feeling colors where there supposedly weren't any. anyway, thank you for this miniseries, john! it was awesome.
Dear crash course peeps, I am currently binge watching crash course literature in an attempt to sleep on the night my best friend, my grandfather has passed away. thank you for being able to do this, and for making these lovely videos
I wish this series had existed when I was in high school. I suck at reading, and I didn't like a lot of the books that I was "supposed" to read as a teenager. Crash Course does a good job at explaining why these books matter, why they resonate and why they're still so powerful today. It makes me want to read again.
Why I love Crash Course: It tells you exactly what you need to know without all of the stupid introductory paragraphs and only one line of actual stuff. I passed almost all of my exams in school because of you guys, so thank you I guess.
Actually, don't do flies come when bodies starts to rot? I'd guess that broken stillness, almost sacred and wished for after a lifetime of fearing death, is also a glimpse for what's coming; a sudden intruder of the real amidst ideal(ized) moments. An the dash as as a resting body, as an eye closed, as a horizontal I.
I would be super annoyed. This often happened at University. Not with Dickinson per se, but with a number of people that I felt were important. But trade-offs have to be made. None the less, skipping Dickinson in American lit class is just wrong.
No. Not at all. Many poets we are forced to study are OVER RATED and many like Dickinson are far over looked. I love her rhyme and meter. I love her play on words/ actions/ feelings. She says a whole lot with a little.
“Dickinson rarely left her house and often talked to visitors through a closed door.” *MISINFORMATION* Emily Dickinson actually loved to be out in the open, since she loved nature
I really appreciate this series. I am in highschool and I have trouble reading critically, however when I watch this show you make it very enjoyable to listen to. I love learning but my body likes to inhibit my ability to focus. Thank you crash course for helping me get over my own brain.
You might want to try using audiobooks. It's a different way of digesting the same material, and it can make it much easier to get through some of the denser texts you have to read.
"Poetry isn't just a series of images, it's rhythmic, metric and we crave the closure of a good rhyme at the end of a poem. That's why there are the sonnets and couplets"
"But my [non-US viewers] friends, even if you don't live here, the history of the United States matters to you -- because we're always meddling in your affairs." So Stephen-King true, and not just in the "we come (ostensibly) to defend you" sense, but also as the most influential source of cultural material in the world today.
no issue there, but you guys operate under the false pretense that yours is the only culture and history that matters. everything else is a punchline or a foot note in your story to you.
If you were directing that comment at me, then I would have to point out that I am not American, though American culture does take up a significant fraction of my personal culture. If you were directing that comment at the producers of the video, then I grant that there is value to your argument, though it offers no suggestion to improve and appears to be meant primarily to inflame rather than constructively criticize.
I was an avid reader Ms. Emily as a teenager, and learned much of my punctuation from her - which I still use to this day. Her letters to the master really giving the dash a serious place in how one speaks on the printed page. Funny, but 30 years later I am still chronically suicidal, have major depression and social anxiety - and of course am agoraphobic. Too bad I'm not a poetess!
The line "Before I got my eye put out" probably refers to a verse in the New Testament where Christ says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is single your whole body will be full of light." Otherwise she would have used "eyes."
Poets are very sensitive to the length of words. She may have chosen "eye" simply because it appeared cleaner or she didn't want a "z" sound in that line. Poets agonize over small choices like that.
I am repenting! Why did it take so much time for me to find this awesome channel? I've always wanted someone to explain English literature to me.Thanks for your contents!
Ahh! I was so happy when I saw that you did one on Emily Dickinson! She is my favorite poet. I always found her poems about disconnecting with society a bit more interesting than those about death, though. Such as in "I'm nobody, who are you?". She was said to go out and play games with children but go back inside the moment any adults came around or lower baked yummies out her window for children to eat, showing a particular fondness (respect?) of children over adults. Wonderful video, sir!
I'd be very interested to see more of these! Perhaps a dystopia novel? 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and maybe even my particular favourite Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro?
“From the wounded soul, comes poetry and music. In return, music and poetry heals the soul.🎶 I came across this quote in a hauntingly beautiful poetry book, “12:12 Midnight” by Danielle Ever Rose
Please don't stop making crash course episodes on books, your videos give me a better understanding and appreciation on books I've read in class. Also you're better than all my English teachers combined
I very rarely comment on RU-vid videos, but I just have to say that I absolutely loved this miniseries and I truly with that you would expand it. As an English teacher I would love to see you do Frankenstein or Macbeth.
This mini series is great. Have you thought of continuing it with more works of literature? I have never heard of these novels or poems but I still understand what is going on and it motivates me to get access to the real thing.
Please make more Literature videos! For what it's worth, I'd say the foot "-ness in", as part of the line "The stillness in the room", isn't iambic but is more like a use of Pyrrhic substitution. She's putting emphasis on the syllables "still" and "room" in that sentence, which contrasts with the use of the word "buzz" in the previous line. (And "buzz" is I think emphasized by a use of trochaic substitution when you listen to it carefully!)
I think the "dash" (I prefer to think of it as a hyphen here) it's like a visual gag/reminder of the nature of poetry in it's written and spoken forms. If you read the poem aloud, it sounds complete (silence). In it's written form it's not, you are left expecting more. Proving that What the eye sees is different from what the ears hear
I hope there is a revival of this mini-series of literature in the future! Maybe after American History? BTW I'm taking AP American History next year, timing couldn't have been better! Thanks for being awesome!
I'm a student teacher, and I used this video in my Emily Dickinson lesson a few days ago. Both the students and my cooperating teacher really enjoyed it! I'd like to echo others' sentiments and hope you'll continue this series as your schedule allows.
I would probably rate Emily Dickinson writing in general with Jane Austen, the letters of John and Abigail Adams, and the Brontë sisters. Top English writers in their own fields but hard to compare with each other
We are on the poetry unit in my English class and today we were discussing "I heard a fly buzz when I died." I felt like a genius. Thank you Crash Course!
When I was in reader's theater, I was taught that a dash was used to imply that the next line was an interruption to the previous line. With that concept in mind, having the dash at the end of the poem means an interruption to the end of the poem by no sound, if just read with the eyes, the poem was interrupted by no sight. Which is awesome!
I think the fly may be even more sinister than death... What if it had something to do with Beelzebub? And the fact that the fly came between the deceased and the light is referenced by Dickenson's flip-flopping between religious or not.
You guys do excellent work. I never cared about about literature or poetry until I started watching your channel. It was your history series that really caught my attention.
Definitely putting down a comment for another series of Crash Course Literature! It would be great to see you guys bring it back in the future as a full length series.
📍Ha now it is a movie! If only she could have ever known, good for her! My mother always read her poems & had many, many of her books. All filled with short poetry and long sonnets. 📚 as I grew up I also started to read her poems. 📖 I loved the shorter ones, which I could read easier as a 10 -14 year old. As I started to grow, and read more and more. Also studied her in college. Sad she was truly only famous after her death. A woman truly a head of her time. 🕯🏞 🏆
You got it all wrong. Since Dickinson was a pious woman, I believe poem #591 to be about salvation anxiety. The King in the poem representing God, the Light representing Salvation, and the fly representing Judgement, which stands in her way of achieving grace. At the end of the poem she is not certain she will achieve it. That’s how I see it, at least.
Calling Dickinson a pious woman is a bit of a stretch. She had a complex relationship with religion at best. In college, the headmistress kept two lists--one of all the "good" girls ready for salvation, and one of all the "bad" girls who were literally unsalvageable. Emily here made the very top of the latter!
She may have had an unconventional understanding of God (for her time, anyway), but she definitely wasn't an unquestionable atheist. She explores the nuances of her beliefs in her poetry and appropriates religious symbols in order to question the church and complicate her own interpretations of them. In any case, you're allowed to interpret her poetry however you like as long as you have the textual evidence to back it up.
As you described the poem and the punctuation, I guess the dashes have their standard meaning of a pause or change of voice; So that final dash is the silence of death after the poem ends. To the guy looking for alternate emphasis ways here are two ideas: Use different letters (bigger, cursive, bolder, different color, more or less ornamental) OR use inflexions creatively (great, greater or greatest) or otherwise pick a different word for a thing or yourself (man, guru, genius, jerk, hunk).
I wonder why she hardly ever left her room, when she thought that 'seeing' (or understanding or acknowledging or whatever) is such an important concept. I get that 'seeing' doesn't need to be always so literal, but I think in order to better understand and observe other lives and the world, one could have tried talking to more, or meeting new people, or traveling. Could anyone help me? Am I misunderstanding something?
