Poets have their ways with words which is how they can pull in their audiences, and cause people to be captivated by the words. A poem by Billy Collins is a typical show of a poet having fun with words. Collins’ poem “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” has a funny but sarcastic diction, persona, image, simile, metaphor, symbol, alliteration, slant rhyme, allegory, and assonance. Some of the most noticeable lines are twenty-three, twenty-six, and twenty-eight. These techniques are repeated in several of the lines, but the terms that are focused on mostly are diction, persona, image, and symbol.
In the poem where it shows a funny but sarcastic diction is in lines one, seven, eleven, eighteen, twenty-three, and twenty-six. What shows the diction is that line one is completely made of the writer’s words, because it says “tippet made of tulle” and in line seven it says “mother-of-pearl,” then in the later lines like with line twenty-three it says, “And I proceeded like a polar explorer.” These lines could have been written differently to make the lines sound different, but Collins’ decided to write them that way because that’s how he wanted the lines to sound. When he chose those words, he was showing when and where to use diction. The persona for this poem would be Billy Collins. This is shown from a first person view, so we get the feel of seeing things from Collins, perspective.
The way this poem shows persona is by noticing that there are lines where he the speaker is very noticeable that he is accounting this from his point of view, and there are lines where he is trying to talk from Emily’s point of view. The lines where it can be found are from lines 20 to 26 these lines are:
The complexity of women’s undergarment...
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...echniques with in this poem the poet’s feelings are evident enough so that a reader who is not fond of poetry would be able to follow the poem more closely, and thus being able to understand the authors, thoughts for writing a line in a certain way. If the reader would like to be able to understand Billy Collins’ poems better they can read poems by Emily Dickinson’s because there are some of Collins’ poems that have lines from Emily’s. So reading those two poets together will help in understanding either one, because of Collins’ affection for Emily.
Works Citied
Collins, Billy. “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer: St. Martin’s, 2012. 627-628. Print.
“Billy Collins: A Poet’s Affection for Emily Dickinson.” Fresh Air. Narr. Terry Gross. Natl. Public Radio, 6 Jul. 2010. NPR.org. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
the surface structure of these poems appears simplistic, but subtle changes in tone or gesture move the reader from the mundane to the sublime. In an attempt to sleep, the speaker in "Insomnia" moves from counting sheep to envisioning Noah's arc to picturing "all the fish in creation/ leaping a fence in a field of water,/ one colorful species after another." Collins will tackle any topic: his subject matter varies from snow days to Aristotle to forgetfulness. Collins relies heavily on imagery, which becomes the cornerstone of the entire volume, and his range of diction brings such a polish to these poems
While on the surface Collins seems to want Emily Dickinson, with a close reading it becomes clear that he is actually obsessed with his mother. His displacement shows how he at least tries to hide is incestuous desires, while his anal retentiveness shows his wish to be in control. The indications that run throughout the poem reveal Collins’ true feelings, and his inability to hide them.
Poetry is something that is to be read delicately and cautiously if one wanted to find meaning through the words. Readers have to be gentle and patiently ponder about what they are reading in order to find any significance in the poem. If someone is not patient with reading, they will not feel impacted by poetry and will not want to read it. In Billy Collins’, “Introduction to Poetry,” he uses figurative language to help readers see that the way to enjoy and understand poetry is by reading between the lines and being patient with how each individual relates to the readings.
In both poems, Collins uses comparative imagery to create a visual representation of readers’ inability to comprehend the essence of literature. In “Marginalia,” Collins compares the readers and their annotations to “fans who cheer from the empty bleachers” (Lines 23-24), illustrating the fans are cheering because they are in the bleachers, not because there is anything to cheer for. Likewise, the “fans who cheer” represent the readers and their enthusiastic annotations towards what they are reading however, “the
Collins’ poems aren’t preachy or meant to teach a lesson; their purpose is to help readers be exposed to different ways of seeing things. Collins seems to go through life with his head slightly tilted; he finds amusement in both the ordinary
Billy Collins is a poet who takes the change, but keeps his own focus. Throughout his poetry career, his voice varies according to the topic he selects, while his unique poetic devices and consistent theme represent who he is as a poet. Collins knows how to express humor and irony to illustrate his bright insights towards the objects, uses particular poetic terms, for instance allusions and metaphors, to deliver his idea efficiently that focuses many times on the theme of death.
Phillips, Elizabeth. " The Histrionic Imagination." Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance. University Park and London: Penn State, 1919.
In Conclusion, Billy Collins use of irony in both the setting and the description of the stereotypical students helped strengthen the allusion of the poem. The students in the poem are in an eternal school lifestyle as opposed to being in a normal town environment. Aspects of the setting, such as the landscape being made out of paper and the night sky being compared to a blackboard painted a descriptive picture in the mind of the reader, making the allusion more believable and relatable. Also, the use of stereotypes in this poem added on to the allusion of the school environment, giving life to the society in the town created by Collins. At first, the poem may seem like only an allusion, but with a closer look, you can see the reality behind it all.
The popular American Poet, Billy Collins, is playing a significant role in the evolution of poetry. His writing style evokes an array of emotions for the reader. Every stanza in his poetry passes the satirical standard that he generated for himself over his career. Collins swiftly captivates his readers through his diverse use of figurative language. More specifically, his use of vivid imagery paired with humorous personification and extended metaphors create his unique style of satirical poetry. This developed form of writing appeals to a large crowd of people because the generally accessible topics that he discusses are fairly easy to resonate for the common man. However, his poetry offers an interesting perspective on what otherwise would be simplistic ideas. The main themes and concepts that are being presented in each of his writings are revered and coveted by the general population. An appealing aspect of his writing is his ability to directly convey the main idea within the poem. As a result, the reader can understand the meaning of his work with ease. The typical beginning of his work gives the reader a slight taste of what is to come. Billy Collins’ unique writing style and various trademarks directly influenced by his ability to propagate an array of emotions for the reader, his humorous tone, and the accessibility of the topics he describes within his poetry.
Billy Collins has used a specific metaphor, simile, rhyme and personification in his poem ‘Introduction to poetry’ in order to show how one should better understand a poem. This poem focused on what the poem actually mean and how a poem should be clearly understood. Throughout the poem, Billy Collins has presented a clear way of understanding the poem by using a very interesting imagery, symbolism, metaphor and a very sensitive sound. The words used in this poem are so powerful that the readers are convinced to think about the issue presented in the poem.
Emily Dickinson’s poems are giving ample scope for interpretation. At first glance her poems seem simple to interpret because of her brevity but exactly that is what leaves space for phantasy and offers the opportunity for different interpretations. What she really means is therefore vague and difficult to grasp. Through her over usage of dashes, which might dramatize her thoughts, the reader’s power of imagination is induced and he or she is able to accomplish the poem with own ideas. Dashes appear at the end or even within a poem, it could connect both parts, beforehand and afterward, is a caesura, the pause in a line of a verse, or even an ellipsis. Because of all three options it is also difficult to figure out what Dickinson’s intention
In conclusion the two things that Emily Dickinson uses is personification and extended metaphor. She uses these things in order to make the reader think of the poems deeper
In the other hand, Emily, despite having an unusual self-imposed private life, her poems were very conservative and structured. She mostly wrote ballad stanzas, which has four distinct lines with her own unique placement of punctuation and unusual grammar. She makes use exclusively of short, repetition, simple lines. An example of it is taken from a ballad poem “A still-Volcano-life”.
"The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a personality' to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways."