No Time for Poetry?: Because I could not stop for Death

Friday, November 4, 2016

Because I could not stop for Death

It's rather the perfect Halloween Poem: Death takes you out on a romantic ride, or so it seems at first glance. Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" is a brilliant composition in six stanzas of decreation. For a reliable text of the poem, see Poets.org
(https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/because-i-could-not-stop-death-479).

Dickinson rarely gave titles to the poems that she inscribed into her own hand-crafted and hand-sewn notebooks, and this is no exception, but over time, first lines have provided titles. You will notice that Dickinson's favorite punctuation mark appears to be the dash, and it has taken a century for her editors to respect her own punctuation. Was that because she was a woman?

So it is helpful to check any published version of a Dickinson text against her own handwriting. It is now possible to do that on-line through the Emily Dickinson archive:
http://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/235752

Visit Dickinson's surroundings ---

Links

If you are a casual reader, The Emily Dickinson Homestead offers their own poem of the week:
http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/node/12 .

More academic readers may enjoy links to "Digital Dickinson" here: http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/resources_bibliography#electronicresources.

Listen to an NPR (National Public Radio) broadcast about Dickinson:
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/18/482478311/nevermind-the-white-dress-turns-out-emily-dickinson-had-a-green-thumb

Poetry Anthologies

Astley, Neil (ed), Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2002.
Bloom, Harold, The Best Poems of the English Language, From Chaucer through Frost, New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Brooks, Cleanth & Warren, Robert Penn, Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students, 1950.
Constantine, David J., Lee, Hermione, and O'Donaghue, Bernard (eds), Oxford Poets 2002: An Anthology, Manchester: Carcanet, 2002.
Feinstein, Sascha & Komunyakaa, Yusef (eds), The Second Set, The Jazz Poetry Anthology, volume 2, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Feinstein, Sascha and Komunyakaa, Yusef (eds), The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
France, Linda (ed), Sixty Women Poets, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 1993.
Longley, Edna (ed), The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2000.
Parisi, Joseph (ed), Poets in Person, A Listener’s Guide, Second Edition, Chicago: Poetry Press, 1997.
Paschen, Elise, and Presson Mosby, Rebekah (eds), Poetry Speaks, Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2001.
Pinsky, Robert and Dietz, Maggie (eds), An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology, New York: Norton, 2004.
Rampersad, Arnold (ed), The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, Oxford: OUP, 2006.
Rees-Jones, Deryn (ed), Modern Women Poets, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2005.
Ricks, Christopher (ed), The Oxford Book of English Verse, Oxford: OUP, 1999.
Rogrow, Zack (ed), The Face of Poetry, Berkeley: U. California Press, 2005.
Rosenthal, M.L. (ed), Poetry in English: An Anthology, Oxford: OUP, 1988.
Vendler, Helen (ed), The Faber Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1985), London: Faber, 1990.
Wu, Duncan (ed), Romanticism, An Anthology, Third Edition, London: Blackwell, 2006.

Poetry's Rhythms & Forms

Wolosky, Shira, The Art of Poetry: How To Read A Poem, Oxford: OUP, 2001.
Wainwright, Jeffrey, Poetry, The Basics, London: Routledge, 2004.
Turco, Lewis, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (1968), 3rd edition, 2000.
Strand, Mark and Boland, Eavan, The Making of a Poem, A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
Oliver, Mary, A Poetry Handbook, Harcourt, 1995.
Lennard, John, The Poetry Handbook, Second Edition, Oxford: OUP, 2006.
Kowit, Steve, In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop, Tilbury House Publishers, 1995.
Kinzie, Mary, A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hollander, John, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse, 3rd edition, Yale University Press, 2001.
Hall, Donald, To Read A Poem, Second Edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1992.
Fussell, Paul, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Attridge, Derek, The Rhythms of English Poetry, London: Longman, 1982.

Criticism & Commentary

Brown, Clare and Paterson, Don (eds), Don’t Ask Me What I Mean: Poets in Their Own Words, London: Picador, 2003.
Corcoran, Neil (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry, Cambridge: CUP, 2007.
Edwards, Michael, Le Génie de la poésie anglaise, Paris: Livre de Poche, 2006.
Gioia, Dana, Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1999), Tenth Edition, Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 2002.
McDonald, Peter, Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill, Second edition, Oxford: OUP, 2007.
Padell, Ruth, 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, A Poem for Every Week of the Year (2002), London: Vintage, 2004.
Parini, Jay, Why Poetry Matters, Yale University Press, 2008.
Paulin, Tom, The Secret Life of Poems: A Poetry Primer, London: Faber, 2008.

Perloff, Marjorie, Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Rich, Adrienne, What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993), New York: W.W.Norton & Co, 2003.
Robinson, Peter, Poetry, Poets, Readers: Making Things Happen, Oxford: OUP, 2002.

Sacks, Peter, The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats, John Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Warren, Rosanna, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, New York: Norton, 2008.

Poetries of the English Language: comparative studies UK & USA

Auden, W.H., "American Poetry," in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1962).

Bromwich, David, Skeptical Music, Essays on Modern Poetry, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2001.

Collins, Billy, "What's American About American Poetry?" undated, posted on U.S. Info State Gov page.

Falck, Colin, American and British Verse in the Twentieth Century: The Poetry That Matters, Aldershot, Hampxhire and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003.

Finch, Peter, "British Poetry Since 1945," The Continuum Encyclopaedia of British Literature (2003).
Homberger, Eric, The Art of the Real: Poetry in England and America since 1939, London: Dent, 1977.
Hooker, Jeremy, The Presence of the Past: Essays on Modern British and American Poetry, MidGlamorgan: Poetry Wales Press, 1987.

Poetry Society, "What's American Q & A Index," at www.poetrysociety.org.
Quinn, Justin, American Errancy, Empire, Sublimity & Modern Poetry, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2005.
Williams, Oscar (ed.), A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, English & American, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946.

No Time for Poetry?

Friday, November 4, 2016

Because I could not stop for Death

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