What is the poem "Abraham to kill him" by Emily Dickinson actually saying?
105988
It's a recounting of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac.  Here's a really good essay I found that includes a section on Emily Dickinson, and this poem in particular.\n\nhttp://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/Warnerabraham.htm\nQuoting, "Dickinson's New England Puritanism images a God of relentless demand--Tyranny, the speaker names Him--and unflinching observation; God is a Mastiff, who can be cajoled by manners and obeisance.  Dickinson, like Powers in "Abraham," identifies Abraham's amazing faith which causes him to act without "a hesitation."  Unlike like Powers' voicing, Dickinson's portrayal is terse and tight.  The condensed wording and the economy achieved through the dashes highlight the silence from Sarah, Isaac, Abraham, and readers who articulate questions that remain unanswered.  Her word is "obeisance," emphasizing the subordinant stance of respectful submission.  Humans, on Dickinson's reading, can only appease this God-ruler with humble acquiesence."
935484
Interesting. Where did you find the quote?
528003
I think that this is probably a variation on a quote that I have heard attributed to Mark Twain and Abe Lincoln. I found it also credited to Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson died before Abe and Twain were born, so I give him credit. The quote is as follows...."It is better to remain silent and thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt."\n\nIn other words....keep em guessing.
924346
How can you kill someone if they tell you to do your own homework? And you did the poem yourself, you didn't ask someone to do it for you.\n\nBut, yeah, the poem sounds great. Personally, I wouldn't change anything since poems are more artistic than being grammatically correct. If you feel that you got your artistic point across, then you don't need to change it.
542314
Genesis 3:4-5  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.\n\nThis was before she ate the apple, therefore evil existed before.  \n\nThis brings about a question of what exactly is evil?  God told Eve not to eat the apple, and look above at what Satan tells her ... what was the lie?  She was already like a god - already knew good from evil - she knew she wasn't supposed to eat the apple, and she didn't die.  If Satan is the master of all lies, then what was the lie?  Tell me, and you'll know what evil is.
714908
Understandable.  ever heard the saying "kill her with kindness"?
1006405
I’m not positive but I believe that what you have quoted is a version of an old song/poem with multiple versions.  One such version follows here and the source link provides much more detail on its origins.\n\n\nVALERIE BLOOM\nWAKE UP, AMY\nWake up, Amy chile,\nwater fe get,\nthe barrel fe full an’\nwe no draw one pan yet,\nan’ me see de sun\na-come up over de hill,\nah know if I lef ’\nyuh gwine be sleepin’ still\nat half past ten,\nmaybe twelve o’clock,\nif yuh don’t hurry up,\nde school gate gwine lock,\nbefore yuh get dere,\nwe haffe look firewood,\ncomb we hair,\ngive de goat dem food,\ntie out de donkey,\nsweep de yard,\nan’ eat breakfast,\nI know it hard\nFe leave you\nNice warm bed,\nBut work dey fe do,\nGet up, sleepyhead!\nWake up, wake up, wake up beeny bud\nWake up, beeny soon o’ mawnin’,\nWake up, wake up, wake up beeny bud\nWake up, beeny soon o’ mawnin’.
93390
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, America's first Republican president.\n\n\nFour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. \n\nNow we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. \n\nBut, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, shall not perish from the earth.
212930
Wow, this poem is something else. By that I mean it is really abstract in its language and in its metaphors. I have a guess on it's meaning, but that is merely a guess. This author is using so much personal experience that it is hard for me as a reader to really connect well with what is being said, but here is my hypothesis:\n\nFirst of all, I think the title "Call It Fear" needs to be kept in mind when reading through the entire poem. The structure and the wording is suggestive of a person who is caught in the panic of fear ("call it an ocean of fear of the dark"). So, it can easily be assumed that this poem is analyzing fear and the essence of fear in the human mind.\n\nThe author has this deep fear, a fear of the dark, or possibly a fear of the unknown. The author is not alone however as she has found someone, referred to as Goodluck, who also has the same fear. They have come together to escape the fear, and their only escape has been found in the music that they have found on the radio, the church music that plays on a lot of stations on Sunday mornings. \n\nThere is also a question of the repeated imagery of "a string of shadow horses kicking and pulling me out of my belly." This image is repeated in the first and third stanzas and is linked to anxiety, the butterfly feeling that everyone gets in the pit of their stomach when they are controlled by fear. The idea of "shadow horses" seems to suggest the idea that death is pulling and tugging at the speaker of this poem, and it is the fear of death that drives the speaker to use music to escape the fear.\n\nThis is my guess on the meaning of the poem. . . I hope it proves helpful!
929020
There's no such thing as "for sure". Thats the onlee sure thing that i do know.- A Beautiful Mind\n\nI went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life To put to wrap all that was not life and not when I have come to die to discover that I had not lived...-Thoreau but this if also from Dead Poets Society\n\nWhat did you just do !!?\nI Blew up a Building! \nWhy?\nBecause you made a pHoNe CaLL...-Enemy of the State\n\n\nLife is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away-Hitch\n\nNever lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away- Hitch\n\nBecause thats what people do they leap and hope to God they can fly because otherwise we just drop like a rock, wondering the whole way down. Why in the HELL did I jump but here I am Sarah, Falling the only one that makes me feel like i can fly is you...-Hitch\n\nAnd here are just some great simpsons quotes\n\n“I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.”\n\nHomer: [drunk] Look, the thing about my family is there's five of us. Marge, Bart, Girl Bart, the one who doesn't talk, and the fat guy. How I loathe him. \n\nMr. Mayor, I have a question for you.....what if YOU came home one night to find your family tied up and gagged, with SOCKS in their mouths.They're screaming.Your trying to get in but there's too much BLOOD on the knob!!!!!\n\nWhat is your question about?\n\nIt's about the budget sir. \n\n\nMarge: Homer! There's someone here who can help you...\nHomer: Is it Batman?\nMarge: No, he's a scientist.\nHomer: Batman's a scientist?!\nMarge: It's not Batman!\n\nHow is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive? \n\nTHATS BECAUSE YOU WERE DRUNK!\n\nMe fail English? That's unpossible\n\nYour guilty consciences may make you vote Democratic, but secretly you all yearn for a Republican president to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king! \n\n\nfin!
1085520
This is my interpretation of the poem....Maya Angelou was a victim of abuse and rape when she was young. I believe the poem expresses her son's thoughts. I believe he is telling his mother that she is not responsible for all the hurt of this world and any hurt or discomfort that he will face in this world and he is thanking her in his own way for her advice as he grew up.
1178168
that is true.\ni think eddie izzard said it best during his dress to kill special.\n\n"cake or death?"\n\nits a false choice, this free will. you can choose to denounce god, but then you go to hell for an eternity of torture. who would in their right mind do that??? \nits not a choice like apple or orange, where both of them have ok endings and its just a matter of preference.\nwhich is why i'm an atheist.\n;o)
574772
Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself verse 10
129860
The poem is talking about the futility and uselessness of war.  The bitter irony is that comrades and the enemy are for the most part ordinary people, not that different from each other.  If he met one of each on the street, he could not tell which is which.  The soldier chose to fight, no one forced him to, and in his last moments he is questioning the sense of that decision.   He realizes that in the end this fighting and sacrifice is not going to change much for the ordinary person, so in many ways it is a waste, a waste of life.  He can't turn back the clock, and his destiny awaits him in "the clouds", heaven, the afterlife.\n\nI hope this helps.
635006
Sort of an explanation....\n\nIt's rather fatalistic, don't you think? For me, the poem is a very serious treatment on the mortality of being human.\n\n"...still like muffled drums are beating funeral marches to the grave".\n\nI memorized that poem 30 years ago and think of it once in a while. Fun to recite as Longfellow has such a simple cadence to his work.
221655
Well... this is more of a lust poem, but he may like it. A woman once gave it to me, and I was flying for days!\n\nO Blush Not So! \nby John Keats \n\nO blush not so! O blush not so! \nOr I shall think you knowing; \nAnd if you smile the blushing while, \nThen maidenheads are going. \n\nThere's a blush for want, and a blush for shan't, \nAnd a blush for having done it; \nThere's a blush for thought, and a blush for nought, \nAnd a blush for just begun it. \n\nO sigh not so! O sigh not so! \nFor it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin; \nBy these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips \nAnd fought in an amorous nipping. \n\nWill you play once more at nice-cut-core, \nFor it only will last our youth out, \nAnd we have the prime of the kissing time, \nWe have not one sweet tooth out. \n\nThere's a sigh for aye, and a sigh for nay, \nAnd a sigh for "I can't bear it!" \nO what can be done, shall we stay or run? \nO cut the sweet apple and share it!
48362
The strong conflict of Puritanism and Transcendentalism in Emily Dickinson's poetry is what allowed her to become one of the greatest and most influential American poets of the nineteenth century. Her Puritan heritage is evident in the early years of her life when she was influenced by a strictly Puritan family, but what is of greatest "importance is not the Puritan tradition itself so much as the breakdown of that tradition that was taking place in Emily Dickinson's lifetime" (Welland 74). In her mind, and only her mind, she can relate to the Puritan foundation because of the influence of her family's beliefs. Emily Dickinson's conforming reverence for God is derived from the beginning of her life, but she could not deny her self-expression. Transcendental philosophy was "asserting the greater importance of the individual as a law unto himself, [and the need to be] his own arbiter of conduct . . ." (Welland 75-76). "[I]n her impatience at the conventional piety of orthodox forms of religious observance Emily Dickinson is only carrying to an extreme the Puritan belief in the necessity of a personal experience of salvation . . ." (Welland 74). Transcendentalism was "a natural outgrowth both of a literary time when visionary ideas were powerfully set abroad and [a time] of personal, exuberant discovery of self in poetry" (Weisbuch 1). As Transcendentalism was beginning to emerge, so was Emily Dickinson's soul.