This week in AP Lit. we looked at a new and very different poem of the week. We read and analyzed a poem written by Emily Dickinson, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain". I found this a very intriguing poem and it was actually very interesting to try and analyze. I viewed this poem sort of as a puzzle, like every stanza was some sort of clue, and it was entertaining to piece together the underlying meaning of Dickinson's poem.
This weeks poem was very different than the poems we read and analyzed in the first couple of weeks. "The Eagle" seemed to be more metaphoric and "Cross" seemed to be more literal while "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" seemed, to me, to be more symbolic. I interpreted the poem to be a correlation between the speaker's literal death due to suicide to escape insanity and the speaker's actual funeral procession.
I found that Dickinson's use of sensory details, or lack there of, really emphasized and made more insightful the meaning behind the poem. The fact that Dickinson intentionally references to the presence of multiple senses such as, auditory senses and tactile senses, not only stresses the importance of the senses present, but also stresses the importance of the absent senses like sight. The fact that Dickinson leaves out any details regarding seeing makes a reader assume that the final result of the poem was death which explains the absence of sight in the poem.
I also found the poem analysis essay discussion we had at the end of class really helpful. Although there is no straight guideline to emulate like Logan and Gary were saying in class, it does help to look at essays that have scored high in AP tests because it gives us an idea of what AP readers are looking for in the essays we write. Now that I have looked at the essay that scored a 9 on the AP test and read the comments and advice that Mr. Schoenborn provided on my original essay, I can apply the good aspects of the essay we looked at to the revisions in my original essay.
This weeks poem was very different than the poems we read and analyzed in the first couple of weeks. "The Eagle" seemed to be more metaphoric and "Cross" seemed to be more literal while "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" seemed, to me, to be more symbolic. I interpreted the poem to be a correlation between the speaker's literal death due to suicide to escape insanity and the speaker's actual funeral procession.
I found that Dickinson's use of sensory details, or lack there of, really emphasized and made more insightful the meaning behind the poem. The fact that Dickinson intentionally references to the presence of multiple senses such as, auditory senses and tactile senses, not only stresses the importance of the senses present, but also stresses the importance of the absent senses like sight. The fact that Dickinson leaves out any details regarding seeing makes a reader assume that the final result of the poem was death which explains the absence of sight in the poem.
I also found the poem analysis essay discussion we had at the end of class really helpful. Although there is no straight guideline to emulate like Logan and Gary were saying in class, it does help to look at essays that have scored high in AP tests because it gives us an idea of what AP readers are looking for in the essays we write. Now that I have looked at the essay that scored a 9 on the AP test and read the comments and advice that Mr. Schoenborn provided on my original essay, I can apply the good aspects of the essay we looked at to the revisions in my original essay.