While the actual rules for playing Boggle are fairly simple, being able to succeed and win requires a bit more strategy. If you were to ask them, the best Boggle players would almost certainly admit to doing a lot of the same things each time they play. The following are a collection of these basic Boggle hints which are sure to improve your score by a few points. Try implementing a couple of these tips each time you play Boggle and your enjoyment of the game will only increase.

• Plural form: Once you find a word on the Boggle board, always make sure to search for the plural form also (ie. cat and cats). Missing the plural form of a word is a common rookie mistake!
• Past tense: If you find one Boggle word, check to see if other tenses exist (ie. tie and tied). Similar to looking for plural words, if there’s a “d” or “ed” available on the Boggle board, it’s likely you can form many past tense variants.
• Expand the word: After finding a short Boggle word, see if you can add letters to make it into an even longer word (ie. act and react).
• Find a word within the word: After finding a long Boggle word, see if there are any words within the word (ie. train and rain, or play and lay…and plays and lays and may, etc.). Add suffixes or prefixes.
• Rhyming words: Look for Boggle words that rhyme, like cat, mat, hat, sat, flat, spat, etc.
• Don’t watch the timer: Keep an eye of the timer while playing Boggle, but don’t focus on it too much or it will distract you.

What to know what words will be on your upcoming GRE exam? This article will offer resources that will help you study the right vocabulary words in order to maximize the effectiveness of your study time. The official GRE word list will be a mystery until you get to your exam. However, there are steps you can take to focus your efforts on the right vocab words and make your studying as fun as possible. (Yes, studying for the GRE can be fun)

First, there are official GRE books available that give a fairly accurate list of the words that are likely to appear on the exam. You may also find these lists across the internet. Be careful with how much stock you put into these online lists. They might not be an accurate representation of what will be on your GRE. With any list you come across it is important to make sure the words are not beneath your reading level. GRE words are challenging and the GRE word list should reflect that.

Second, find an entertaining way to study the GRE words likely to be on the exam. It is one thing to know what words will be on the exam, it’s another to spend the time necessary to fully understand and memorize definitions. You will spend much more time studying for this all important exam if you enjoy the process. It is well worth the investment to buy a fun study guide. A great technique is to use vocabulary rhymes to learn tricky words.

To create that perfect harmony, you will need rhythm. You can create your own rap beats and sell them on the internet if you have imagination and some creativity. It also takes a good ear for music.

With the technology today, it is easier to create beats. The sale of fresh and original beats on the internet was made possible with that same technology. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can make beats and create songs and make money selling them, if they are good.

You will need to choose a program and make sure that the one you choose is understandable and easy to use. Fruity Loop and Audacity are two such programs that can help and can be downloaded from the internet. There are many to choose from but those two are towards the top of the list. They are user-friendly and will help you create raps and quality music.

You will need to keep a few things in mind before you sell your beats online:

A must is a good set of beats. Listen to different artists and find a beat that you like and start from there. The main part is the beats when constructing a rap beat. It is 4-8 measures in length and is played through the whole song. You will need to write your lyrics after you have arranged and assembled your beats. You will need to think of a title and think of what you want to tell your audience with the lyrics. When writing, free-style is easier than rhyming although most rap beats rhyme at the end.

When you get your lyrics and beats done, you can now sell your product. You can create your own website or have them published on a site that produces rap beats for sale. It is completely up to you now that you have the technology and ability to create your own beats.

Ugh, Bad Behavior in Classrooms!

Disruptive behavior in classrooms is a common problem in various regions beginning with Kindergarten. This information highlights one profound fact: appreciation for education begins at home. According to brain research, many children struggle in school with academics and social skills because critical pathways in the brain were not formed during their first three years of life. And it takes language development to strengthen the process of this formation. There are a few things parents can do to ensure their child’s success.

Read Stories

Parents can read stories to their child with interesting characters, beautiful settings and exciting plots. With this face time, children will hear voice inflection and watch facial expressions with each emotion that the story presents. They will learn early to make necessary literary connections. Furthermore, assisting your child with learning to make those necessary literary connections can be done by simply asking your child questions about the story during and after reading. Who or what was the story about? Who were the main characters? Was there a problem and if so, what was it? How was the problem solved? When, where, and why did the main event happen? Keep your child focused on the five W’s and the H, and their comprehension will sky-rocket.

Read Poems

Parents can read rhyming poems which encourages language expression and develop auditory skills of varying phonemes necessary for mental word building manipulation. After reading two lines, ask your child for the two rhyming words. When this practice is done frequently, your child should be able to tell you which words rhyme.

Play Language Games

Playing language games at this early age will introduce the child to letter knowledge and teach the child to manipulate onsets, rimes, and the beginning and ending blends needed to create various words. Filling your child’s world with language development opportunities from 0-3 years will ensure proper brain cell development and multiply his or her chances of success in the classroom.

What’s Myelin?

In conclusion, it hurt me when a guest speaker in a kindergarten classroom asked a student (who had no behavioral control) if his mommy hugs him. He frowned, shaking his head and said, “Only when I was a baby when she feed me a bottle.” We can see that this child is associating a loving hug to being held for feeding and has no other memory of receiving an embrace. Affection is essential to human maturity. Hugging and massaging your baby creates the fatty material, myelin according to Perles (2014). “[Myelin] coats the brain cells and speeds up the electrical impulses which cause them to work more effectively than neurons that are not coated in myelin.” Affection moms, dads and guardians – affection, reading and word games introduced at this early age will prepare your child for school before school.

My twelve-year-old still looks forward to bed time stories. She is in the top 25% of her class and is reading at high school, if not early college level.

Poems go beyond the cute little love notes and clichés like “roses are red and violets are blue”. Poems allows for thinking outside the box and doing something unexpected unless you are a poet! If you have suffered heartbreak, you may be wondering “can poems help to get my ex back?”

If you are thinking about how to win your ex back, you may want to consider using poems. This will be a little unexpected for your ex which doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to work but it is something to consider as you try to win your ex back. You will have to consider your ex first and determine whether they like poetry and would therefore respond positively to a poem written by you.

If poetry is the last thing your ex would expect you to do to try to win him or her back or if your ex does not like poetry, your ex may still get a kick out of you doing this and while this may not win him or her back immediately, they may start to see you in a new more positive light.

While there are no guarantees that writing your ex a poem will help you get your ex back, if you decide that this is the route you want to take, here are some suggestions.

1. Before attempting to write your ex a poem, take some time to research. Check out a book of poems at the library and read through a few poems to give you some inspiration or guidance. Do remember that a poem straight from the heart is the best way to go whether your ex is receptive or not.

2. The poem doesn’t necessarily have to rhyme. Most don’t. The ones that do are mainly classic poems from poets for whom poetry is their job and passion. Using free verse for a get back together poem, which is from the heart, works the best. This kind does not have to rhyme.

3. Be yourself. Don’t try to sound like Shakespeare or one of the other greats. Put down how you really feel about your ex and what he or she added to your life which will be more meaningful. If you are still madly in love with your ex, be clear about it and write it down.

4. Keep it simple. Use plain language with very clear meaning so there is no room for misunderstanding. You don’t want the meaning to get lost in translation by using big words or flowery language.

5. If on the other hand you are still stuck for words or you are not happy with what you have come up with, find a love poem that expresses how you feel. There are literally thousands and thousands of love poems for you to choose from online, at the local library, etc.

When you find one you like, include it in a letter or card to your ex. Don’t email it though. Letter writing is a lost art and taking the time to do this will show how thoughtful you are.

Poetry has emotion, imagery, significance, beauty, dignity, rhythm, sometimes rhyme, a different arrangement which can include inversion, and concreteness in its images.

One way to attain the qualities so essential to making words poetic is through the use of poetry devices. We won’t begin to cover all the known poetic devices or terms. Rather we’ll discuss and use some of the more commonly known and used ones.

Below are the more commonly used poetic devices and terms. Hopefully, with the examples given, everyone can better understand some of the ways to make poetry, well, more poetic. The examples used are my own poetry and are copyrighted in my name.

Poetry devices (a major sampling):

alliteration: the repetition of a beginning sound.

Rain reigns roughly through the day.

Raging anger from the sky

Partners prattle of tormented tears

From clouds wondering why

Lightning tears their souls apart.

In the first two lines, the r sound is repeated. In the third line p starts two adjoining words.

allusion: a casual reference to someone or something in history or literature that creates a mental picture.

A Common Woman

No Helen of Troy she,

Taking the world by war,

But a woman in plain paper wrapped

With a heart of love untapped,

She waits, yearning for her destiny

Whether it be a he on a charger white

Or one riding behind a garbage truck.

Perhaps instead a room of students

Lurks in the shadows of her life

Needing her interest to be shown.

Yet other concerns may call

No, no Helen of Troy she,

But a woman set the world to tame

Wherever she may be.

Helen of Troy brings to mind a woman so beautiful that two countries went to war over her.

analogy: the comparison of two things by explaining one to show how it is similar to the other.

Day’s Journey

The day dawns as a journey.

First one leaves the station on a train,

Rushing past other places

Without a pause or stop,

Watching faces blur through the window,

No time to say goodbye.

On and on the train does speed

Until the line’s end one sees,

Another sunset down

Without any lasting memories.

The whole poem creates analogy, the comparison of a day and a train journey.

caesura: the pausing or stopping within a line of poetry caused by needed punctuation.

Living, breathing apathy

Saps energy, will, interest,

Leaving no desire to win.

All that’s left are ashes,

Cinders of what might have been.

The punctuation within the lines (in this case, all commas) are the caesura, not the punctuation at the ends of the lines.

enjambement: the continuation of thought from one line of poetry to the next without punctuation needed at the end of the previous line(s).

Looking through the eyes

Of wonder, of delight,

Children view their world

With trust, with hope

That only life will change.

Enjambement is found at the end of lines 1, 3, and 4 because punctuation was not needed in those places.

hyperbole: extreme exaggeration for effect.

Giants standing tall as mountains

Towering over midgets

Bring eyes above the common ground

To heights no longer small.

Arms of tree trunks wrap

In comfort gentle, softness

Unthought of due to size,

Yet welcomed in their strength.

Giants aren’t really tall as mountains, nor are arms tree trunks, but the use of the exaggeration helps create the image wanted.

metaphor: the comparison of two unlike things by saying one is the other.

Sunshine, hope aglow,

Streams from heaven’s store

Bringing smiles of warming grace

Which lighten heavy loads.

Clouds are ships in full sail

Racing across the sky-blue sea.

Wind fills the cotton canvas

Pushing them further away from me.

In the first stanza, sunshine is compared to hope while in the second, clouds are compared to ships.

metonymy: the substitution of a word for one with which it is closely associated.

Scandals peep from every window,

Hide behind each hedge,

Waiting to pounce on the unwary,

As the White House cringes in dismay.

White House is used in place of the President or the government, and readers understand what is meant without exactly who is being directly addressed.

onomatopoeia: the sound a thing makes

Roaring with the pain

Caused by flashing lightning strikes,

Thunders yells, “Booooom! Craaaashhhh! Yeow!”

Then mumbles, rumbling on its way.

Grrrr, the lion’s cry echoes

Through the jungle’s den

Causing creatures small

To scurry to their holes.

Roaring, rumbling, cry are not examples of onomatopoeia, but are verb forms. Boooom, craaaashhh, yeow, and grrrrr are examples of onomatapoeia.

oxymoron: the use of contradictory terms (together) for effect.

Freezing heat of hate

Surrounds the heart

Stalling, killing kindness,

Bringing destruction to the start.

Freezing and heat are contradictory, opposites, yet the two together create a mental image.

personification: the giving of human traits to non-human things incapable of having those traits.

Anger frowns and snarls,

Sending bolts of fire from darkest night

That bring no brilliance,

Rather only added blackness of sight.

Frowning and snarling are human traits that anger cannot experience; however using them as traits for anger creates the imagery needed.

simile: the comparison of two unlike things by saying one is like or as the other.

Sunshine, like hope aglow,

Streams from heaven’s sky

Bringing smiles of warming grace

On breeze whispers like a sigh.

Clouds are like ships in full sail

Racing across the sky-blue sea.

Wind fills the cotton canvas

Pushing them further away from me.

These two stanzas of poetry and those for metaphor are nearly identical. Both metaphor and simile are comparisons of unlike things, but metaphor states one thing is the other while simile says one is like the other, or as the other.

symbol: something which represents something else besides itself.

The dove, with olive branch in beak,

Glides over all the land

Searching for a place to light.

Storms of war linger on every hand,

Everywhere the hawk does fight.

The dove is a symbol of peace, and the hawk is a symbol of war. Using them in poetry gives an image without having to explain in detail.

Other terms:

elegy: a poem of lament (extreme sorrow, such as caused by death)

free verse: a poem without either a rhyme or a rhythm scheme, although rhyme may be used, just without a pattern.

blank verse: un-rhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ten syllables with all even numbered syllables accented)

imagery: the use of words to create a mental picture

mood: the emotional effect of a poem or a story

Understanding and using these devices and terms can help improve and strengthen poetry. Imagery is essential for vivid poetry, and devices help develop imagery.

Christina Jussaume is the Christian author of the following books: My Walk With Jesus (2007), Joseph’s Star of Eternal Promise (2008); and Spiritual Living Waters Flowing in Words (2008). She is an excellent author of Christian poetry and has received many accolades and praises regarding her poetry.  She is the inventor of the famous Christ-in-a-Rhyme poem and various other poetic forms. She is to be complimented for all her poetic efforts and inventions.

Christina is a real lover of pets and animals. Kitties are close to her heart. She has favorite name for them such as: Fluffy, Tamatha, and Mitten her first of the litter and real mischievous ones. Cocoa is the cool cat always relaxing. Jake is the one who stole the cake with the black tuxedo; Joshua the apple of her eyes in black and white; and Magic is just a precious soul. Magic has disappeared recently and hopefully by now has been found. Christina has written a special poem for Magic for magic.

Her love for Magic is like a mother’s love for her child. I also recalled the loss of a cat as a child and it was like I lost my best friend. Her kitties’ tales as just adorable and will bring joy to the hearts of the readers.   Christina also mixed special spicing to this book just like she is baking a special cake. The Fables give the book a special touch. I like the storyline in each, beginning with The Rooster and the Hen, to The Farmer, The Peacock and the Fox, and The Giraffe Family, the Fables are like spices in a special cake. The moral of these stories are also very touching.  

This book is very pleasing to the eyes with the variety of pictures she has included. The pictures have a thousand words regarding the poems they go with. These pictures are very touching and bring a sense of pride to the pages. As always, her special friend Pat Simpson has performed marvelously for her in setting up the pages as her publisher.  

One aspect that is always special and stands out in Christina’s book is her parents. Tributes are always given to them for their love and nurturing. Additionally, her children are next to her heart, and accolades are rendered upon them by a precious mother. The love of family certainly has a special place in her heart.   Christina is truly amazing in the way she brings Tinniesville, a rural small town, into her poems. Her articulation is wonderful regarding the story of this town. This is an excellent short story taken apart and written as a poem for everyone to enjoy in a different style of reading. This is so brilliant! Once again this creativity speaks of her excellent style of writing.  

This book is also a teaching tool. Reading about the Australian Kookaburra is a lesson in itself. I was under the impression this was a relative of the Kangaroo until I finally read the page and saw the picture. How amazing! Additionally, Denny the Dolphin is such fun to read about. Wait until you see Donna who is teasing Denny to take a leap with her. They are so fantastic and are attached to each other.   The variety of poetry forms used in this book is an education to the reader. I like how the Tanka form describes the hawk, and the Nonet form the eagle. The Quatrain form gives deep vision to The Doggy Tales, The Bunny Rabbits, Bear Family, Tiger’s Plight, The Flying Squirrel, and others. I also like the pictures used with each poem.  

Her articulation of the haiku and senryu poems is just amazing.   Her bifurcated string of these poems is excellent in describing animals and their relationships. The pictures of the Sly Skunk and Prairie Dog are neatly positioned with each page and corresponding poem.   This is certainly another wonderful publication by Christina in her series of book and poetic collection. She is certainly building a library for her readers. Having known Christina for many years, being familiar with her creative poetic style, and having read all four of her book, I can attest to the fact that she is an awesome poetess. 

Getting and reading her books is certainly a blessing in itself. Her articulation of poetic verses is certainly touching, moving, and uplifting.   More information may be obtained about Christina at the following sites: http://www.Poetesscrjussaume.com, and http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2740826.Christina_R_Jussaume. Please check out her sites and her book for great poetic verses.

Very often Seminary students in their first year are thrown into the language studies of Hebrew and Greek. The study of Hebrew and Greek is for a good understanding and exegetical skill needed for a good exposition of the scriptures.

Hebrew in particular is a language that first off is hard to even look at. The 22 different characters can be quite a challenge to memorize and the many different words another challenge of exponential proportions. For example multiple words of opposite or entirely different meanings exist in the Hebrew.

Awb for example can mean father and green herb. The question that often comes to mind is:

“How can the same spelling word have so many different meanings?”

The answer that is given usually is: “There is no rhyme or reason for these different meanings. Just memorize the words, don’t try to make sense out of them.”

This is actually not true. There is a rhyme and reason for each word, and letter. But to understand the words, you need to first understand the letters.

Origin Of The Languages

The background of the letter is significant and actually traces its answer in around 3000 BC.

Archaeologists have long since discovered that ancient languages originated in the middle east area, actually modern day Iraq or ancient Babylon. The theory is that the multiple languages migrated from the Fertile Crescent area in all directions. Some migrated to the North and East in Turkey and Greece, others to the south, Egypt and Ethiopia. And further still to the east, in what we call modern day India and China.

What is a common theme in all these languages is the starting of pictographs as a language form. For example the Chinese/Korean/Japanese have not ceased in using their pictograph forms for letters. Early Chinese language forms for example have letters that represent man in the form of a stick figure. And additionally the word for “loss” in the Chinese language is a two mouths in a tree.

Significance of The Pictographs

For a seminary student this “loss” or “wreckage from sin” fact is quite significant. What this demonstrates is a confirmation of a scattering of languages, and a carry over of the Eden story in the language. The most significant fact is that the language was endeavoring to do two things: 1.) Form a communication medium 2.) Retain Past Histories.

The Babel Connection

According to the Bible narrative of the Babel history, the leader, Nimrod was using temple worship as a form of nationalizing or unifying the people in a one world government. God saw this unification process, which essentially said “man is the measure of all things” as a thumb in the face of God and His plan of righteous expansion in the earth.

The problem with Nimrod is that the world was not getting expanded but centralized, additionally; the whole ethic of the people was going downhill real fast. So God chose to “make strange their speech” as a judgment of scattering.

The purpose of this scattering effect was to slow down the rapid expansion of idolatry and to promulgate the expansion of peoples in the earth. So instead of being able to unify together and build this massive system of idolatry, they were scattered. God made strange their speech, because they thought His speech (His Law) was strange. Not until Pentecost was the Babel curse started to be rolled back. The gospel at the time of Pentecost was not going to be hindered by language but was going to expand in the earth, unlike the counterpart of Babel where idolatry was being hindered.

As you and I well know, the curse of Babel is still significant in the earth, where many in the world do not have gospel message. But the prime reason why we would even learn Hebrew is to have a better understanding of what the Old Testament is trying to tell us.

Why Bring Up Babel?

I bring up the Babel story in particular to show that languages started out pictorial. In the desperation after Babel, life did not cease to exist, but large challenges about how to trade and communicate with one another suddenly existed. To write contracts for example a language was needed to trade effectively and not cause hostilities.

Contracts are vital for businesses to operate, and so in order to get food on the table, a language, or a means of communication was desperately needed. So everyone started out simple. They started out with pictures and progressed from there.

All Languages Started Out Pictoral

The real dividing line is that languages started out using pictures from different vantage points. Like the Chinese for example having their word for man being a stick figure, would be contrasted to Hebrew being “Adam” which is very deep in pictoral signficance (Adam means Dominion and the derivation comes from the letters…that at another time)

The Hebrew letters are the foundation to the language. Each letter has a background and a History that is significant. Each letter also has a meaning and an ideology. A good Hebrew Alphabet Card system will use all three. The better systems use theology to bind them together.

Downfalls To Common Memorization Techniques

Common memorization techniques use irrelevant combinations of sounds and pictures. This really does a disservice to the treasure trove of information and understanding that can be gathered from the rich Hebrew Language.

For example to memorize a letter based on its sound is not enough. To memorize the letter on its look is not enough. To memorize the letter on how it fits in words is really not enough either.

People Are Visually Orientated

People are visual in orientation. We often memorize by picture. How many times have you recalled a memory based on an event or a place that you were at. A crisp fall day, for example, with the brightly colored leaves brings back memories of days when burning leaves was okay, or the smells of pumpkin shells and the sound of jumping in leaves when you were a kid.

These visuals, smells, and sounds all recalled by one picture, a yellow maple tree.

Biblical Pictures

The same goes for the Hebrew language. Actually the Hebrew culture was formed around pictures too. Jeremiah eludes to this when he states:

Jer 31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Jer 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: Jer 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

The new covenant was to be written in their hearts, not ON them. The old covenant was written on them in all sorts of ways, by the clothes they wore, the food they ate and how they washed. All these were pictures of a greater picture to come which was righteousness manifested in Christ our Lord snd His magnificent work..

Hebrew Alphabet Is Critically Foundational

The point being that the Hebrew Alphabet and Words were foundational to their language and to their theology.

So learning the Hebrew language need not be a chore, but with a fundamental understanding of the language is very helpful. Pictures and theology are the key. These concepts are so simple that even a 4 year old can learn and enjoy Hebrew studies.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had the first time I wrote a poem. It was a combination of power, pride, gratitude and just plain amazement.

With so few words, in just the right order, with just the right images and feeling, it is possible, with poetry, to say what it might take a book of prose 1000 pages to accomplish. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is an old adage that applies to the “pictures” the poet can conjure up in the mind of the reader or listener when they experience a poem that touches them in ways they never knew possible.

A great poem can take you on a journey into the heart of God and back again.

So, what makes a great poem? There are basically four requirements:

• The element of surprise: All great poems hide something from the reader until they are ready to “let the cat out of the bag”.
• A determined Meter: Meter in poetry can be defined as rhythm or beat. The rhythm of the poem sets the reader up for the pace and flow of the poem. How fast or slow will the poem move along its path to the “surprise” awaiting us.
• Colorful Imagery: Poetry without colorful imagery might as well be prose. It’s the imagery that releases the reader from their mundane, everyday experience and leads them on the journey you have prepared for them.
• Universality: The more universal the theme and topic of the poem, the more each individual reader can identify with the poem. You can express individual hurt (or joy), for example, but the reader must be able to see it as his or her hurt (or joy) as well.

There we have it. Now, lets take a look at a poem I wrote a few years back and see if it adheres to our four requirements:

Just in Time

A poem is very hard to write

especially when you try to rhyme

the first with any other line

within the poem, try hard though I may

could take at least another day,

or two, before the word for such a feat

comes tumbling near or at my feet.

but two more lines is all I’ve left

must put the poem back on the shelf

before my mom turns out the light.

“Goodnight”.

The element of surprise:

The poem is taking us somewhere but we don’t really know what is happening until the very last line in the poem. The author is looking for a word to rhyme “write” (the last word in the first line) with but doesn’t fine it until the last word of the poem. We are taken on a journey and we are not sure, until the end, if the author will reach his goal in time.

A determined Meter:

In this poem the meter is driving us rather quickly through the poem. The author is teasing us with the “missing” rhyme word to get to the end as quickly as possible. By using little punctuation, minimum capital letters and a mixture of rhyming techniques the poem moves much quicker.

Colorful Imagery:

Words like feat, feet, tumbling, shelf help us see the author’s urgency in finishing the poem.

Universality:

Everyone has tried at one time or another to write a poem. And, if you have, you know how difficult it is to find the right words to rhyme with. When you are under time pressure, it is even more difficult. This poem expresses that frustration with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor.

So, there you have it. Just keep those 4 things in mind and you will write a great poem.

I hope you have been inspired to give it a shot. Just remember to have fun!

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Emily Dickinson was an innovative and talented American poet who wrote nearly 1800 poems during her brief lifetime from 1830 to 1886. Dickinson became publicly well known as a poet only after her death because she chose to publish only a very small number of her poems, somewhere between seven and twelve, during her lifetime.

Emily Dickinson’s Life

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a well known family. Her grandfather helped to found Amherst College and her father, a lawyer, served for numerous years in the Massachusetts legislature and in the United States Congress. Dickinson had a one year older brother and a three years younger sister.

As a young girl and teenager Dickinson acquired many friends, some lasting a lifetime, received approval and attention from her father, and behaved fittingly for a girl during the Victorian era. She received a classical education from the Amherst Academy and was required by her father to read the Bible. Though she attended church regularly only for a few years, her Christian foundation remained strong throughout her life.

Dickinson attended nearby Mount Holyoke College for only one year, due to numerous reasons, and then was brought back home by her brother, Austin. The Dickinson family lived in a home overlooking the town’s cemetery, where she is buried, for a few years before moving into the home her grandfather had built, called “The Homestead.”

At home in Amherst, Dickinson became a capable housekeeper, cook, and gardener. She attended local events, became friends with some of her fathers’ acquaintances, and read a number of books given to her by her friends and her brother. Most books had to be smuggled into the home for fear that her father would disapprove of them.

Emily Dickinson enjoyed the writings of an impressive list of contemporaries such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. She also read from the Victorians, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Carlyle, and George Eliot, and the Romantic poet Lord Byron. She also loved “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens. When she discovered Shakespeare she asked, “Why is any other book needed?” In her home she hung portraits of Eliot, Browning, and Carlyle.

Dickinson grew more reclusive into the 1850’s. She began writing poems and received favorable response from her friends. Throughout the rest of her life she adopted the friendly practice of giving poems to her friends and bouquets of flowers from her garden. Her garden was so varied and well-cared that she was better known as a gardener than a poet.

During the Civil War years of the early 1860’s, Emily Dickinson wrote more than 800 poems, the most prolific writing period of her life. During this period Dickinson saw the death of several friends, a teacher, and the declining health of her mother who she had to tend closely. These unhappy events saddened Dickinson and led her to treat the subject of death in many of her poems.

Following the Civil War and for the remaining 20 years of her life, Dickinson rarely left the property limits of The Homestead. Her father, mother, and sister Lavinia all lived with her at home, and her brother lived next door at The Evergreens with his wife, Susan, a longtime friend to Emily, and their children. She enjoyed the company of her family and wrote often to her friends, but residents of Amherst only knew her as the “woman in white” when they infrequently saw her greeting visitors.

After several friends, a nephew, and her parents died, Dickinson wrote fewer and fewer poems and stopped organizing them, as she had been doing for many years. She wrote that, “the dyings have been too deep for me.” Dickinson developed a kidney disease which she suffered from for the remaining two years of her life. The final short letter that she wrote to her cousins read, “Little Cousins, Called Back. Emily.”

Characteristics of Dickinson’s Poetry

Emily Dickinson’s sister, Lavinia, gathered Emily’s poems and published them in 1890. Editors changed some of her words, punctuations, and capitalizations to make them conform to a certain standard. Later editions restored Dickinson’s unique style and organized them in a roughly chronological order.

Emily Dickinson’s poems have many identifiable features. Her poems have been memorized, enjoyed, and discussed since their first publication. Many critics consider her to have been extraordinarily gifted in her abilities to create concise, meaningful, and memorable poems.

The major themes in her poetry include Friends, Nature, Love, and Death. Not surprisingly, she also refers to flowers often in her poems. Many of her poems’ allusions come from her education in the Bible, classical mythology, and Shakespeare.

Dickinson did not give titles to her poems, an unusual feature. Others have given titles to some of her poems, and often the first line of the poem is used as a title.

She wrote short lines, preferring to be concise in her images and references. A study of her letters to friends and mentors shows that her prose style was composed of short iambic phrases, making her prose very similar to her poetry.

Dickinson’s poems are generally short in length, rarely consisting of more than six stanzas, as in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” Many of her poems are only one or two stanzas in length. The stanzas are quatrains of four lines. Some poems have stanzas of three or two lines.

The rhythm in many of her poems is called common meter or ballad meter. Both types of meter consist of a quatrain with the first and third lines having four iambic feet and the second and fourth lines having three iambic feet. The iambic foot is a unit of two syllables with the first syllable unstressed and the second syllable stressed.

In her quatrains the rhyme scheme is most often abcb, where only the second and fourth lines rhyme. Such a rhyme scheme is typical of a ballad meter.

Many other poems are written in a meter that is typical of English hymns. This rhythm pattern is characterized by quatrains where lines one, two, and four are written in iambic trimeter and the third line is written in iambic tetrameter.

Often her rhymes are near rhymes or slant rhymes. A near rhyme means that the two rhyming words do not rhyme exactly. They only make a near match.

In Dickinson’s poems, capitalizations and punctuations are unorthodox. She regularly capitalized the nouns but sometimes she was inconsistent and a few nouns were not capitalized. For punctuation, she frequently used a dash instead of a comma or a period, and sometimes she used a dash to separate phrases within a line. Some editions of her poems have attempted to correct the punctuation of her poems.

A dozen or more composers have set Dickinson’s poems to music, including Aaron Copland who produced “Twelve Songs on Poems of Emily Dickinson” in 1951. 0ne of the interesting ways to treat some of Dickinson’s most famous poems, often learned in school, is to sing them to the tune of “Amazing Grace,” or “The Yellow Rose of Texas, or most humorously, the theme to “Gilligan’s Island.”

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is a brilliant poem, well constructed, easily understood, and filled with many poetic conventions. The first stanza is often quoted alone and represents one of the most inspired quatrains in American poetry.

In the first stanza Dickinson has created a wonderful metaphor that is carried throughout the poem. She has personified death, giving him a name, a conveyance, and a companion. The presence of Immortality in the carriage softens the idea of the arrival of Death. And the fact that He kindly stopped is both a reassurance that his arrival was not unpleasant and an expression of the poet’s wit. It is ironic in a humorous way to imagine Death being kind. The speaker in the poem is speaking of an event that happened in the past, another reassurance that there is survival after death. Dickinson’s Christian view of eternity and the immortality of life are evident in these stanzas.

The second stanza is about Death arriving slowly such as the result of a disease, which in fact Dickinson did succumb to at the end of her life. Again, there is an ironic reference to Death, this time to his civility, which rhymes with “immortality” from the first stanza and ties the two stanzas together. Notice that there are a couple of examples of alliteration, one in the first line with “knew no,” and another in the third line with “labor” and “leisure.”

The third stanza gives a picture of the journey. The children and the school in the first line refer to early life. The fields of ripening grain in the third line refer to life’s middle stage. Finally, the setting sun in the fourth line refers to the final stage of life. Notice the use of anaphora to effectively tie all of the stages of life together. The repetition of the phrase, “we passed,” at the beginning of the lines is known as anaphora. There is also a pleasant example of alliteration in the second line, “recess” and “ring.”

The fourth stanza contains two more examples of effective alliteration and creates the image of a person who is not dressed appropriately for a funeral. In fact, the gossamer gown is more like a wedding dress, which represents a new beginning rather than an end. Notice also the near rhyme in this stanza as well as in several other stanzas. Oddly, this stanza was not included in early editions of Dickinson’s poems; however it appears in all of the more recent editions.

The grave or tomb is described in the fifth stanza as a house. The description indicates that the poet feels at ease with the location. The last stanza indicates that centuries have passed, though ironically it seems shorter than the day. The “horses’ heads” is a comfortable alliteration and ties the vision back to the first stanza. The final word, “eternity,” which rhymes with “immortality” in the first stanza also brings all of the stanzas together and brings the poem to a calm close.