Emily Dickinson

I think when reading poetry, it is easy to look at a poem and go, "too long with too much going on, must be difficult" or "wow, super short with short words, must be an easy read".  Sadly, most students are taught to loathe poetry.  So if they actually decide to read poetry, they go for the shorter one because it must be easier.  If they read it, they just give it a short sweep and assume whatever conclusion they have come to is the only one.  Or, they just search on the internet, see the popular belief and assume it to be true.  Assumptions when reading poetry are not beneficial.  Assumptions in general are not helpful for much of anything.  
Just looking at Emily Dickinson's poetry is amazing.  She uses so many dashes!  I love it!  And there aren't that many words, which can at first be lovely, but an absence of words does not mean an absence of depth.  I think it is easy to assume that her poems are very straightforward, but I don't believe them to be.  Dickinson and Shakespeare have about the same depth.  With Shakespeare's sonnets, it can be somewhat difficult to find the meaning, but he does have a great plenty more words in his sonnets (usually) than Dickinson does.  With her terse nature, one can see it as she is simply terse and what you see is what you get.  I find that is not a beneficial way of looking at Dickson's poetry.  In that regard, I think she is simply deceptive.  Most would see the short poems with short words and assume them to be easy peasy.  As mentioned previously, Dickinson has as much depth, if not more, as Shakespeare.  She writes with such feeling and emotion, and manages to contain that in a short poem.  

Whitman

In the first bit of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Whitman repeats the word 'face'; which this repetition, I do believe I should be paying attention to the word 'face'.  To me, the repetition of the word shows the many faces there can be.  On the ferry, he can see many physical and human faces; yet, he can also see the faces of the tide.  With saying the tide has a face, he is personifying the sea.  I found this to interesting.  While we do hear of the sea being personified--usually as a spiteful woman (I'm not even going to touch that idea)--this idea of faces is new to me when thinking of the sea.  The tide, a temporary and changing thing, becomes more human and therefore relatable.  The sun is also given a face.  This is not as new of a concept.  I found it difficult to concentrate after reading of the sun's face, because for some inexplicable reason, all I could think of was the baby sun from Teletubbies.

I found his address to 'you' was interesting.  I can't quite figure out who the you is in the second half.  In the first, it refers to the tide and the sun (but not the Teletubbies' one). 

The opening line of the second part has fantastic consonance in 'impalpable sustenance'.  Quite frankly, I don't even care what he is trying to say here, because I find the consonance to be amazing.  It is one of those phrases that makes me want to read more.  This consonance is continued throughout the piece, but not as spectacularly compact as in the opening line (in my opinion).  The second piece also employs repetition.  I find repetition to be helpful because it is a--sometimes--discrete way to clue me in to what I should be focusing on.  
Looking ahead on the remainder of the pages, I can see Whitman likes to repeat himself.  I can also see the word 'you' used a rather unhealthy amount.  The 'you' meaning seems to escape me.  I thought I understood it in the first piece, but the remainder of the poem I cannot quite discern who the 'you' is referring to.  I can see that it probably refers to someone who is crossing the Brooklyn Ferry, and Whitman probably feels strongly about them--otherwise, why write such a long poem?

"fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water" (1384)  I just really enjoy the word centrifugal.  Due to that word being in a heinous Shania Twain song from my childhood, I now have that song stuck in my head and that is not quite conducive to reading Whitman.
"vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet" (1384)  I don't know how vapor can fly in fleeces, but I find the visual to be interesting. As it is within the last weeks of the semester, my addled brain visualizes fleece pull-overs flying through the air and coaxing vapor to fly with it.  I can safely imagine this is not what Whitman had in mind when he wrote those lines.  

When reaching the fourth piece, I find this piece to be more of a poetic letter.  Kind of like in Shakespeare had tried to write a letter instead of sonnets.  It still employs poetry, but it not quite poetry.  It has deep feelings and vivid imagery.  

I apologize that this blog post is quite scatter-brained and reads more like my thoughts while reading the poem, instead of thoughts after having read the poem and digested it.  It is nearing finals time and I am much more scatter-brained than usual.