It's funny, because I tend to develop fixations on final stanzas. Sometimes, if I have a long poem and I am trying to decide whether to invest the time or not, I read the last few stanzas first. If I don't like the end of the poem, I don't bother. It's rare for me to pick the first stanza as my favorite.
My 11th-grade English teacher told our class that all poems have a turning point, that's where their effect is. I had never thought of it that way before, but since then I've almost always noticed it, and it's usually the last stanza or line.
There was a disagreement on a bathroom stall recently over whether Emily Dickinson was angsty or not. On reading this, I can't decide; it kind of is, but the detached way she says "Still fascinated to presume/That Some - are like My Own" points in a different direction.
Emily Dickinson was really my first introduction to poetry and the main reason I love it to this day. As a girl I used to fantasize about dressing all white and never leaving my room. Now I fantasize about drinking highballs well into noon.
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I like this stanza for the creative syntax:
I wonder if it hurts to live -
And if They have to try -
And whether - could They choose between -
It would not be - to die -
But this is the one that I love the most:
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes -
I wonder if It weighs like Mine -
Or has an Easier size.
By the way, a little piece of trivia: "stanza" means room in Italian.
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Thank you for the trivia.
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And how anal is it to correct the spelling in a comment???
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Wow, I thought I was the only one who did that ^^ Maybe the only one who still does >.>
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