A Route of Evanescence Analysis

If you're familiar with ballads and/or hymns, you know that they are typically written in short quatrains, with alternating rhyming lines. Dickinson's favorite brand of stanza is known as the hymn...

Our speaker seems to be something of a nature buff. In using terms like "Emerald" and "Cochineal"—terms that have specifically natural connotations—we know that she's something of a smarty-pant...

Pretty much all we know is that the poem takes place outside. We can also say that it's probably summer or spring as there are flowers involved. There are no street signs or time markers, so this c...

Try reading the poem out loud. How long does it take you? Probably less than 30 seconds, right? One of the things about this poem is that it reads very quickly. But if you slow down you'll find som...

We know that Dickinson didn't title her poems, so if you were to ask her a question like, "What's Up With the Title?", she might be all, "Um, what title?" Then things might get awkward. You see, th...

Dickinson loved nature, and many of her poems contain a speaker marveling at the natural world. Sometimes nature teaches the speaker a lesson in her poetry, and at other times the speaker uses natu...

This poem can pretty tough slogging, mostly because of the compound nouns Dickinson uses. If you find yourself struggling, just know that almost everyone feels that way, even literary scholars! In...

According to scholar Judith Far, Dickinson often sent her poems to friends, along with little bouquets of flowers. Aww. How sweet. (Source) The color cochineal is derived from smashing up and boili...

This nature poem may be the closest we ever get to the literal "birds and bees," but if pollination goes down here, the reader isn't really sure of it. In fact, the bird may or may not make contact...

Shakespeare, The Tempest (7)