Emily Dickinson 1489 Analysis

One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.

In poem #1489, the speaker never explicitly reveals the subject of the poem, which forces the reader to understand every line to discover the meaning. Through grasping the content

of each line, one is able to understand that the author is depicting an outstanding experience with a rapid, beautiful hummingbird. While the poem’s structure seems unconventional, it parallels the unexpected and unique experience that the speaker has. Dickinson’s poem is short and broken up through her use of dashes. The dashes strategically separate the different aspects of the poem, each focusing on an important part of the bird, the experience, and the curious nature with which the speaker watches it.
The first lines of the poem establish a series of contradictions, a representation of the author’s unusual experience. A “route”(1) implies a beginning and end, a sense of certainty and direction. “Evanescence”(1) is the opposite- it suggests something vanishing and a sense of vagueness. By using words that are contradicting, Dickinson is able to develop a sense of curiosity and awe about the subject of the poem. She highlights how something can be present, yet absent at the same time, emphasizing the importance of perception and acute awareness. In the next line, a “revolving wheel”(2) contradicts a “route”(1). While the wheel lends insight to the eternal motion and continuity of the bird’s travel, it also purposefully helps show how the author struggles to describe her experience. A wheel moves in a circular motion and has no beginning or end, while a route is often linear. These opposite motions illustrate how what the author is seeing is so unexpected and baffling that she can’t even describe it logically. This contradiction also connects the reader and speaker, because the confusion that the reader experiences mimics what the author is feeling in that moment. The uses of contradictions emphasize the speed and finesse that the hummingbird shows. The bird moves so quickly, yet gracefully, that it has a defined route, just not clearly visible to the human eye at all time. This is one instance where we see how the author idolizes the hummingbird and shows a great fascination towards it.
The poem then shifts to focus on the visual observation of the hummingbird. Once again, Dickinson’s meticulous word choice serves as a vehicle to indicate her awe towards the subject. Dickinson’s use of “resonance”(3) and “emerald”(3) have a strong impact on how the reader understands the speaker’s perception of the bird. Resonance is typically an echoing of a sound, but can also mean giving rise to a phenomenon, as well as having the power to evoke emotions, images, or a sympathetic response. To the speaker, watching a swift hummingbird is a phenomenon; without even seeing the entirety of the bird, the streak of color in the sky allows the speaker to perceive its figure and beauty enough to remember it. Using the word “resonance”(3) exemplifies how the viewer’s experience with the hummingbird is not ordinary. Not only is the way the speaker describes the perception of color special, the use of “emerald”(3) elevates the bird’s presence and is more powerful than using a colloquial word, such as green. Emerald is a symbol of preciousness, royalty, and elegance; these underlying meanings reveal how Dickinson was able to turn what may be considered ordinary into something extraordinary and unique.
In the following line, “rush”(4) has many alternative meanings that shape how the poem is perceived. It refers to how the author physically sees the bird move quickly, as well as the overwhelming rush of emotions that she feels. This introduces the reader to the excitement that the speaker continues to show throughout the poem. Such as in the former line, Dickinson chooses to use a more scholarly word to describe the color red, “cochineal”(4). By using such a perplexing, unusual color, it signifies how the bird visual stuns the speaker and leaves a lasting impression. In addition to word choice, these lines take a loose form of synecdoche, which helps shape the overall image of the poem. Dickinson uses the color of the bird’s feathers to represent its body. By doing this, she is able to depict what the author feels are the more impactful parts of her experience and of the physical bird. It also leaves the bird’s general physicality partially open for interpretation by the reader.
Without knowing what the subject of the poem is, the third section is where the reader gains the most insight into the possibilities.

Dickinson writes about “every blossom on the bush”(5), often a place where you find birds perched. This is the first time that the reader is directly introduced to something pertaining to nature; therefore, it acts as a turning point in the poem. The use of the word “blossom”(5) parallels to “cochineal”(4), as both are shades of pink. By choosing to use blossoms, as opposed to a harsher word, Dickinson is able to achieve a sense of delicacy and gracefulness. This works in accordance with the way she speaks of the hummingbird’s physical appearance and movements. Dickinson also personifies the bush through her use of the verb “adjusts”(6) and “tumbled”(6). The word “adjusts”(6) implies that there has been an event that has caused a change in position, similar to how a human turns their head when watching something pass. The unusual personification of the bush emphasized the overall unexpectedness of the

experience.
In the last two lines of the poem, the reader is presented with a more playful side of the speaker. She transitions from using very specific words to more casual words such as “probably”(7) and “easy”(8), showing the reader a sense of certainty in her thoughts. These two lines focus solely on the bird’s ability to move extremely fast and smoothly. For the hummingbird, traveling from Tunis, Africa, to the United States is “an easy morning’s ride”(8); the author is alluding to the speed and ease at which the hummingbird travels. While this functions as a hyperbole, it helps the reader comprehend the excitement and playful tone that the speaker has transitioned to. She is celebrating the bird by saying that they could accomplish such a feat. These last two lines connect to the entirety of the poem. They reflect the speaker’s awe with the hummingbird and her fascination with what she witnessed.
Dickinson’s poem demonstrates poetry’s ability to mark absence. While the speaker is not describing a still image of the hummingbird, the words used are able to create a concrete representation of the subject. By doing this, Dickinson shows how poetry can describe and create something in the mind of the reader without explicitly describing every aspect of it. Dickinson refers to both linear and circular points of views; when the speaker tries to see the bird on a linear path, she is unable to. In this way, Dickinson shows the reader how society is too narrow minded and therefore shields themselves from beauty around them. Ultimately, Dickinson’s poem was able to defamiliarize what the reader knows in order to show the world with a different and more interesting perspective.