Emily Dickinson, a chief figure in American literature, wrote hundreds of poems in her lifetime using unusual syntax and form. Several if not all her poems revolved around themes of nature, illness, love, and death. Dickinson’s poem, Because I could not stop for Death, a lyric with a jarring volta conflates several themes with an air of ambiguity leaving multiple interpretations open for analysis. Whether death is a lover and immortality their chaperone, a deceiver and seducer of the speaker to lead her to demise, or a timely truth of life, literary devices such as syntax, selection of detail, and diction throughout the poem support and enable these different understandings to stand alone.…
Emily Dickinson’s main purpose in poem 355 is to describe an indefinable depression. She creates a melancholy persona to depict the chaos and despair she feels because of her condition. Her poem is structured around her uncertainty towards her mental state. Dickinson, in the first two stanzas, eliminates possibilities to what she may be feeling. She analyzes that “it was not death”, “it was not night”, “it was not frost”, “nor fire”. The poem appeals to the human sense of touch, as Dickinson compares tangible sensations that the body normally experiences to her tumultuous emotions. In the third stanza, Dickinson synthesizes all of the possibilities she eradicated in the previous two stanzas, ominously stating that her condition “tasted like them all”. The narrator is unable to distinguish her feelings from one another, leading the reader to conclude that she is in a chaotic state of mind. She compares her condition to a funeral, both of which evoke death. In the fourth stanza, Dickinson continues to explore her persona’s dark psyche. The narrator experiences terror and despair to the point where she “could not breathe.” Her only “key” to escape this punishment is to be able to understand what she is feeling and why…
The language present in Emily Dickinson’s poetry is at times unclear, sometimes ungrammatical and can be found to be disjunctive. Dickinson wrote in distinct brevity, irregular grammar, peculiar punctuation and hand picked diction. Her poems were written in a circular manner, where she took the reader to one place and them swept them back to the beginning always relating one metaphor to the next. Dickinson was an intimate person throughout her life, and her poems reflect that lifestyle. Like her poems, she was never quite figured out. Dickinson wrote not for the audience to understand but for her own self expression by writing down the words as they came to her, with little regard to the conventional syntax or diction. In this poem Dickinson coveys a metaphorical description of hope through simple language to explain a complex idea present in everyone’s life.…
Dickinson’s poem “510: It was not Death, for I stood up,” explores the uncertainties of Death. The speaker attempts to define or understand her own condition to unwrap the cause of her suffering. The use of extended metaphor is utilized as the speaker uses the term “death” and that her life and state of mind, to her, resembles nothing other than death itself. The dominant effect would be the feeling of despair as the speaker represents this by saying “As if my life were shaven, / and fitted to a frame,” or in other words indicating that the speaker’s life has been shaven down solely to despair and that the “frame fitted” would only be feelings of terror. Dickinson frames her poem into 6 quatrains each with the alternations of 8 and 6 syllables per line. The irregular capitalization in the poem is shown with the use of “it” and other terms relating to death, light, dark, cold and somewhat chaotic tragedy.…
Emily Dickinson in her poem #465, covers the subject of death in a way that I…
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 and died on May 15, 1886, she was born and died in the same house and it was called the Homestead. The Homestead was located in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson was a well-known, great American poet during her time. Growing up Dickinson had very good education she studied at Amherst Academy for seven years of her youth and then proceeded on to attend Mount Holyoke College. Over a time period of 30 years she wrote and revised almost all the 1800s poems that have been passed down to us today, she did this all at a small desk in her bedroom. She would go to her room and write in the afternoon after she finished her household chores which were cooking, baking, gardening, and cleaning. She would started writing in the afternoon…
In poetry, Dickinson is often fascinated by nature, death, pain, love and God. In her poems Dickinson often speaks elliptically. That said, when reading Dickinson's poems, we must dot the I's and cross the T's that we think are not L's. We must make our own interpretation because Emily would not have wanted us to interpret them at all. This is where the window is open to much criticism that maybe a pro or con to how others view Dickinson and her work. This is where we unknowingly hyperbolae words or phrases that should be litotilate.…
After studying a bunch of Emily Dickinson’s poems and learning a little bit of background about her, I have discovered that I really appreciate the complexity of her work, and when I first read Marilyn Nelson Waniek’s poem, “Emily Dickinson’s Defunct,” a poem written about Dickinson, I found it to be very interesting. It was fascinating, one, because it valued Dickinson and her work, and two, because it reminded me of another one of my favorite poems, “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” by Billy Collins. The reason it reminded me of Collins’ poem was because of Waniek’s allusions to Dickinson’s poetry throughout the poem, which Collins did a lot in his poem. There are many aspects of this poem that interest me but the top three are the speed of the poem, the many allusions to Dickinson’s work, and the bluntness, comicality, and contradiction of how Waniek describes Dickinson.…
Michael Salvucci Mrs. Comeau English 10 Honors Death, Pain, and the Pursuit of Peace Although Emily Dickinson’s poetry is profoundly insightful, her poems have a very confinedpan of subjects and themes. Most likely due to her early life and social reclusion, Dickinson’s poetry is limited to three major subjects: death, pain, and on a somewhat lighter note, nature. Dickinson’s poetry is greatly influenced by her early life as she led an extremely secluded and pessimisticlife. In her early adult years the poet spent one year studying at female seminary, from 1847 to 1848. Dickinson’s blunt pessimistic attitude is shown in a letter, written to a friend, as she says “I am not happy…Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have answered, and I am standing alone in rebellion.” (Meltzer 20-21) The poets self-described rebellious manner can be acclaimed to her residence featuring many politically active and dominant men, as her brother, father and grandfather were all attorneys with interest in politics. Again in a letter to a friend written during a political convention, Dickinson wonders “why can’t [she] be a delegate in the convention?” as she says “[she] knows all about the tariff and the law.” (Sewall 64-65) She recognizes the gender barrier in society and as a result Dickinson develops a unique style of poetry. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. (Lines 1-4) The speaker’s use of the word ‘kindly’ to describe death exemplifies his civil and considerate manner, but is his courteous character an illusion? Later in the poem the speaker writes: We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. (4-8) Because of death’s kindness in stopping for the speaker, she “put[s] away / [her] labor, and [her] leisure too,” (5-6), is death being true in taking her to heaven, or is he betraying her? There interposed a fly (9-12)…
How strange that when inside a scenario very similar to the one she mourns for in “Contrasts”, Dickinson seems just as miserable. Therefore, one might conclude that her reclusive lifestyle was both her own private heaven and hell. She seems to crave joy and yet chooses to be melancholy. The choice of the word “abstinence” in the first poem seems to imply that she somewhat consciously denies herself the guilty pleasure of happiness, perhaps feeling it sinful to enjoy life when others, like the soldiers she mentions, are suffering. The words “stimulate” and “spices” contrast with her favor of the bland. This is similar to the juxtaposition of the warmth of the scene inside the open door to her lost plight outside in the second poem. Within the two descriptions of diametrically different experiences, both of which are encounters with others, one can simultaneously feel the heartache of Dickinson’s loneliness as well as her overwhelming desire to seek comfort in…
In poem 314 Dickinson describes the feeling of hope using a metaphor of a bird. This metaphor is made clear in line seven, “That could abash the little Bird-“. This is the first and only point in the poem in which Dickinson openly recognizes that hope is as bird. Throughout the entire poem Dickinson uses certain terminology and images to convey this metaphor.…
Dickinson is able to so effectively present the importance of sight because in 1864, she spent seven months in Boston undergoing eye treatment. In Poem 327, she appears to be reflecting on this experience, as well as exploring further possibilities, hence the use of the conditional tense. This is undoubtedly a poem of praise for vision, yet this is balanced by the solitary nature of the poem which creates a sense of pathos. Whilst traditionally women 's poetry was considered to be more polite, this is definitely not true of this poem, which uses raw, visceral imagery to emphasise the importance and power of sight.…
The brilliant uses of imagery, personification, and symbolism in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death” reveal that death is not the end, but only the beginning of an eternity. Through Dickinson’s use of imagery, she successfully paints the different scenes with descriptive language and metaphors to allow the reader to get a deeper sense of the mood and what the poem is conveying. Using personification as one of the most important tools of literature in the poem, the author creates a unique view on the experience of death, painting it into a more pleasant light. Lastly, though Dickinson’s use of symbolism, she bestows many representations and symbols that help to strongly portray her underlying truth on the subject of death.…
Emily Dickinson is an American poet of exclusion, whose writing consists of passionate and emotional eccentric meanings with much complexity. Her poems interpret her relationship with society, where she struggles to maintain her independence and needs to isolate from society to maintain this. Dickinson’s use of structure, syntax and rhyme are complex and do not conform to the norms of poetic structure, which is a parallel to Emily’s peculiar lifestyle.…
I choose to discuss Emily Dickinson's poem 202 (185) . This poem was very short but strong. The poem in my opinion explains how people who are believers of God or their "faith" believe in it at all times, but there are people who only believe in God only when there is an emergency. The style of writing could not really be specified that much in this poem since there is only four lines.…