Resources for Emily Dickinson Poems

The list of poems we'll be discussing appears here; if you have trouble finding them in a printed collection of Dickinson's poems, you can easily find them online along with some wonderfully enriching study resources.

Emily Dickinson's Lexicon: gives definitions of all the words ED used, taken from the specific dictionary she used.

http://www.poemhunter.com/emily-dickinson/

Tips for Reading Emily Dickinson's Poems

Samples of the small scraps of paper ED wrote her poems on

An artist's tribute to ED's poems and her "miraculous year"

Major Characteristics of ED's poems

Aaron Copeland's "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson"

Out of Time? Can't Find a Copy?

 

This month our selection is Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. As Hardy books go, this one is fairly cheerful. If you don't have time to hunt down a copy, try reading it online here , at "Online Literature."  Or trying listening to a very nice, gentle reading of it on Librivox, here.

Meanwhile, here is, in part, the poem from which the title was taken:

Elegy Written in a Church Courtyard
Thomas Gray,  1751

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Emily Dickinson Selections

In April we will be discussing selected poems by Emily Dickinson, and that selection has been made! Here's the list, along with the standard editorial number which will enable you to find them easily in whatever collection you may use.

214 : I taste a liquor never brewed
241 : I like a look of agony
249 : Wild nights, wild nights!
258 : There’s a certain slant of light
280 : I felt a funeral in my brain
328 : A bird came down the walk
341 : After great pain
414 : Twas like a maelstrom, with a notch
435 : Much madness is divinest sense
465 : I heard a fly buzz when I died
510 : It was not death
632  : The brain is wider than the sky!
741 : Tell all the truth but tell it slant
970 : Color—caste—denomination
986  : A narrow fellow in the grass
1540 : As imperceptively as grief
1593 : There came a wind like a bugle
1740 : Sweet is the swamp with its secrets

Great Free Read: Annotated Moby Dick

We already read Moby Dick for one of our Long Summer Reads, but the Leviathan rates more than a single shot! Lower for him whenever you find yourself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it's a damp drizzly November in your soul...

The nicest way to read him is maybe an antique edition with Rockwell Kent's woodcuts, but failing that, here's another idea that has its advantages: a free online annotated version. Fire up your iPad, prop it on a pillow, and follow the whale...

This selection begins with my favorite paragraph. If I could string up a hammock in my living room to read it in, I surely would.

George Orwell Essays Selected

Following is the list of George Orwell's essays that we will be reading for our January 17 meeting of Classics Revisited:

Such, Such Were the Joys
Shooting an Elephant
Politics and the English Language
Why I Write
The Art of Donald McGill
Marrakech
Looking Back on the Spanish War
England, Your England


All of the above essays except "England, Your England" can be found here:

And "England, Your England" can be found here:

Update 1/14/2012:  If you have a chance to read "A Hanging" as well, please add it to your list. You can read it here:

Dec 20 meeting starts at 6 pm

Our December 20 meeting will begin earlier than usual so that we may watch the 2002 film version of this month's title, The Importance of Being Earnest. The movie will start at 6 pm and lasts 97 minutes. If you don't care to watch the film, you are welcome to join us later for the discussion portion of the evening, around 7:40 pm.

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

By Kenneth Koch

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!