"I Read My Sentence Steadily" by Emily Dickinson

Topics mentioned in this episode include:

-The antitheses of Emily Dickinson

-White = Infinity in 19th century American Lit.

-Fascicles!

-The Modernist, Feminist, and Queer claims on Emily

-Magnificent and trending writer Virginia Woolf

-A secular Memento Mori

-Ballad Stanzas and Common Meter

-The Amazing Grace phenomenon

-Why Ballad Stanzas sound so ballad-y

-Slant rhyme revisited

-Matthew's podcast Sleerickets!

-Why Big Pun and Robert Pinsky use slant rhyme differently.

-Slant rhyme modulation!

-How to stack ambiguities like a pro (it involves big puns)

-Original sin and the birth of Death

-Did you just gender my soul???

-God as Plural: Jewish and Christian takes

-The morbidity of Keats and Dickinson, compared

-The Aghori

-One more pun as a nightcap before eternal sleep

Text of poem:

I read my sentence steadily, Reviewed it with my eyes, To see that I made no mistake In its extremest clause, --

The date, and manner of the shame; And then the pious form That "God have mercy" on the soul The jury voted him.

I made my soul familiar With her extremity, That at the last it should not be A novel agony,

But she and Death, acquainted, Meet tranquilly as friends, Salute and pass without a hint -- And there the matter ends.

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My favorite poetry podcasts for: Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet: Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /) Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u) Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /) Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u) Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u) Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /) Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u) Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)