Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
The very first line proclaims the intense metaphor of books sustaining life. By equating words to food, or something worthy of consumption, Dickinson creates an idea of literature essential to the continuation of human life. The capitalization of the word “Words” lends itself to the idea of words as their own entity, and as something with more substance than merely the words themselves. Continuing to the next line, the theme of words as food persists. The connotations of the word robust are most commonly well-fed and vigorous, so the point the narrator makes is the nourishment of the spirit can only literature can facilitate. By
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capitalizing spirit, Dickinson informs the reader of the importance of the spirit in the overall structure of the poem. The spirit is not merely a person’s disposition, but their soul. The poem continues, stating that the subject “no longer knew he was poor” (3).
Excellent literature often leads to a deep involvement that can cause the reader to no longer be aware of their surroundings. In this poem, the subject gains much from the literature, forgetting that he is poor and malnourished. This forgetting of his state of being continues in the next line, which states that he did not remember that “his frame was dust” (4). Once again, the theme of literature transforming the body as if it were nourishment reappears. The capitalization of the word “dust” significantly changes the meaning. In the Bible, God created humanity of dust and returns humanity to dust when a person dies. In capitalizing dust, Dickinson says that this man is dying, returning to dust. This is also the first evidence of a rhyme scheme in the poem, with the rhyme of robust and
dust. In the next stanza, the speaker says that the subject “danced along with dingy Days” (5). Generally, the expression “dancing through life” connotes a simple ease to life that is not often granted to poor people. Often the fickle nature of family bestows this simplicity at birth. The poem goes on and speaks about a “bequest of wings” (6). To bequeath something is to leave it for someone to inherit, so the line is talking about the inheritance of wings. These wings almost certainly have an angelic symbolism to them. Additionally, there is definite intention in the passing on of these wings, as the giver predetermines anything inherited. The final two lines begin again with books, with the addition of liberty. Tying into the line before, the speaker explains that the inheritance of wings was “but a book”. This line again returns to the theme that literature is both powerful and transformative. The wings the speaker flies on are literature, as it carries him away from his unpleasant current state of affairs. The concluding line once again ties into the line before, saying that loose spirits bring liberty. Repeated here is the capitalized spirit, which effectively means soul. The final line brings along with the second and last rhyme of the whole poem, rhyming brings with wings. The meter contributes to the lilting feel of happiness the poem exudes. Overall the work is highly optimistic, and carries throughout a sense of awe at the transformative power of books.
The structure of this poem is complex and it tied directly into the figurative meaning. This poem consists of three quatrains written in iamic meter but with no set number of feet per line. Also, the second and fourth lines of each quatrain thyme somewhat. Perhaps the most perplexing attribute of the structure is that Dickinson capitalizes words in mid-sentence that would not normally be capitalized. This could represent decaying objects; capitalized words represent things still standing and lowercase words represent things decayed. This poem is choppy at timed, but it flows smoothly at others. Long hyphens throughout the poem slow down reading speed. This could be compared to the rate of decay. Sometimes decay is rapid, sometimes it is slow. the last three parts of the poem’s structure help create its figurative meaning.
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.
Emily Dickinson had an interesting life, and is a profound woman in the history of America and literature. Emily wrote many poems. Some are titled, and many are given chronological numbers instead of headlining the main theme. I am interpreting Poem #315.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
The life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.
Emily Dickinson expressed her thoughts in short poems, refining each word to create precise meter and rhyme to get her point across. She debates faith versus science very strongly in 4 lines in “Faith is a Fine Invention,” and she supports an argument on why you do not have to go to church to be holy in twelve lines with “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church.” All of these poems are concise, beautiful, and get Dickinson’s point across splendidly in an amount of space that no other person could use so powerfully. On the other hand, Douglass is much more long winded with his writing. Instead of a pile of short snippets, Douglass’s greatest work is a sixty-nine page autobiography, where he tells his story as a slave. He spends plenty of time elaborating on the details of his life as a slave and painting a picture, such as when he describes slaves walking through the woods in the passage “While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness.” (Douglass 8). This passage focuses on using many details to help provide an image of a real scene from Douglass’s memory, contrasting with Dickinson’s typical abstract opinions and arguments. In addition, the two writers’ methods of conveying their argument is very different. Dickinson primarily uses logical arguments, using
“It was not death, for I stood up…”, draws us into a world of depression that could only be expressed through poetry. In the face of internal—and external—questions about loneliness and self-loathing, Dickinson’s poem is a moving testament that laments these particular states of emotion and despair. One cannot explain nor comprehend the depth of how she feels. Her images of darkness and death, as well as her specific metaphors and poetic devices allows the reader to enter her chaotic state of mind. Although she concedes the impossibility of comprehending her emotions, through her writing, the reader can understand her confusion, hopelessness and anguish. If we also know depression, we cannot find solace in her words, but we can rest a little knowing that we are not alone.
In After great pain, a formal feeling comes(341), Emily Dickinson offers the reader a transitus observation of the time just after the death of a loved one. Dickinson questions where one goes in the afterlife asking, 'Of Ground, or Air' or somewhere else (line 6)' We often remember those who die before us, as we ourselves, as morbid as it may be, with everyday, are brought closer to our own deaths. As used in most of her poetry, she continues in iambic meter with stressed then unstressed syllables. Dickinson, however, straying away from her norm of 8-6-8-6 syllable lines repeating, uses a seemingly random combination of ten, eight, six, and four syllables, with the entire first stanza of ten syllables per lines. Line three lends itself to ambiguity as Dickinson writes, 'The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,' he, refers to the heart, yet she doesn't specify exactly what he bore. Dickinson refers to the Quartz grave growing out of the ground as one dies, lending itself to a certain imagery of living after death (lines 8-9). Although the poem holds no humor, she stretches to find what goes on after death. As we get to the end of the process of letting go of the one dying, Dickinson reminds us of the figurative and literal coldness of death. The cold symbolizes an emotion and lifeless person as well as the lack of blood circulation.
This poem includes the theme of death, but also shows the transition from Dickinson’s depressed phase into her manic phase. In the first two stanzas of the poem, the speaker describes “mourners” processing into a funeral and the monotony of the funeral itself (Dickinson, n.d.a). The structure of the first two stanzas is similar, beginning with the mourners “walking to and fro” and “treading-treading” (Dickinson, n.d.a). The emphasis of walking and the repetition of the word “treading,” like the previous poem, highlights the monotony of the scene (Dickinson, n.d.a). This reflects how people with depression tend to “go through the motions without any enthusiasm” (Man & Martin, 2012). Instead of completing tasks mindfully and enjoying what they are doing, a person experiencing a depressive episode is more likely to only do what they need to do to get
Franklin, R. W. ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. PS1541 .A1
Porter, David T. The Art of Emily Dickinson’s Early Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Print.
Emily Dickinson was known to be one of the best poets in the 19th century as she displayed a unique writing style discussing her experiences and beliefs. Throughout her life, she wrote over one thousand poems with many recurring themes, all tied to religion, nature, and death. Even though the theme of the afterlife is not one of her major topic she wrote about, Dickinson somehow found a way to express her interest in eternity. Poems 160 and 271 show Dickinson portraying a narrator’s desire to live in the afterlife for eternity while questioning if true happiness can be found in that world.
In the poem, “It was not Death, for I stood up,” Dickinson uses words to describe the sense of hopelessness she feels as she tries to pinpoint the source of her anguish. In the first two stanzas, she uses specific sensory details to convey her chaotic feelings to tell the reader what her condition cannot be. A repetition of “it was not” (1) is then followed by a reason of why she eliminated the possibility, using the senses of sound or touch. She merges together the conditions she had eradicated and through her chaotic state, her thoughts turn toward funerals. This causes her to think about her death and her current state of mind. She feels her “life were shaven” (13), so that the only emotions left were despair and terror with the feeling of hope lost. She also “could not breathe without a key” (15); terror does not directly affect a person’s breathing, but it sometimes causes a person to feel as if he were suffocating, unable to breathe. Her “key” that she needs is to understand what she is feeling, but she cannot figure it out (15). The last stanza in the poem expresses an overwhelming feeling of bleakness, there is no opportunity for rescue, “like Chaos— Stopless— … / Without a Chance… / Or even a Report of Land—” (21-23). In the last line, there is a paradox, that since there was no possibility of hop...
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