Analizing Emily Dickinson's Poetry

1064 Words3 Pages

Emily Dickinson’s poetry goes where most poets refuse to go: the fear beyond death. Being surrounded by death, due to the Civil War it comes to no surprise that Dickinson would express such a morbid topic. However, it is the way that she expresses death that is significant. Her writings tend to go against her Puritan heritage by not suggesting an afterlife. In Dickinson’s poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” oblivion is the object to fear, not death.

No one can argue against the fact that Dickinson’s “dashes appear to be quite deliberate” (Fagan 1). The emphasis or meaning behind the dashes is still to be determined; however, in “Because I could not stop for Death”, “I heard a buzz—when I died” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” the poem ends in a dash to “suggest that the poem has no end at all” (Fagan 3). In ending the following poems in an elusive dash, “the meaning [of the poem] lies in the absence; the meaning is what neither we, nor she, can know, but that the dash invites us to seek” (Fagan 5). It is the dash at the end of the poems that leave the resolve unknown.

Another impact of Dickinson’s extensive use of dashed lines “stage endless verbal deaths as ideas and statements come quickly and then expire, each like a last gasp of breath, leaving tenuous connections between lines at times. Dashes inside the line halt other progressions, such as the separation of subjects from verbs evocative of the body departing from the activity of life” (Barnsley 1). The unknown of the sequence of events causes terror. In Dickinson’s poetry, “it is this oblivion where terror resides, not the process of dying itself” (Barnsley 2). Dickinson’s belief that “de...

... middle of paper ...

...ily Dickinson, New Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2008. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 30 Apr. 2014

Huff, Randall. "'I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 30 Apr. 2014

Leiter, Sharon. "'I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,'." Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 30 Apr. 2014

Leiter, Sharon. "'I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—'." Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 30 Apr. 2014

Show More
Related

  • Because I Could Not Stop for Death and I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died Poems by Emily Dickinson

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both parallel and opposing views on death.

    Read More

  • The Implicit Intimacy of Dickinson's Dashes

    1987 Words  | 4 Pages

    The dash in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, initially edited away as a sign of incompletion, has since come to be seen as crucial to the impact of her poems. Critics have examined the dash from a myriad of angles, viewing it as a rhetorical notation for oral performance, a technique for recreating the rhythm of a telegraph, or a subtraction sign in an underlying mathematical system.1 However, attempting to define Dickinson’s intentions with the dash is clearly speculative given her varied dash-usage; in fact, one scholar illustrated the fallibility of one dash-interpretation by applying it to one of Dickinson’s handwritten cake recipes (Franklin 120). Instead, I begin with the assumption that “text” as an entity involving both the reading and writing of the material implies a reader’s attempt to recreate the act of writing as well as the writer’s attempt to guide the act of reading. I will focus on the former, given the difficulties surrounding the notion of authorial intention a.k.a. the Death of the Author. Using three familiar Dickinson poems—“The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” “The Soul selects her own Society,” and “This was a Poet—It is that,”—I contend that readers can penetrate the double mystery of Emily Dickinson’s reclusive life and lyrically dense poetry by enjoying a sense of intimacy not dependent upon the content of her poems. The source of this intimacy lies in her remarkable punctuation. Dickinson’s unconventionally-positioned dashes form disjunctures and connections in the reader’s understanding that create the impression of following Dickinson through the creative process towards intimacy with the poet herself.

    Read More

  • “Because I could not stop for Death” and “Annabel Lee”: Similarities, Differences, and Their Authors

    1506 Words  | 4 Pages

    " Bloom's Literature. Ed. Facts On File, Inc.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    She chooses this arrangement of verse in order to ordain a religious aspect into the poem, which does well to suite the theme and what she is fond of. As the recollection of the speaker’s death progresses, Dickinson uses the stanzas to mark the stages of the

    Read More

  • Hollowness in Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Discourse

    3878 Words  | 8 Pages

    Homans, Margaret. “’Oh, Vision of Language’: Dickinson’s Poems of Love and Death.” Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Ed. Suzanne Juhasz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. 114-33.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Obsession with Death

    2687 Words  | 6 Pages

    Dickinson, Emily. "The World is not Conclusion." Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.h. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, 1993. 729.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson and Her Poetry

    3199 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Identity and Ideology Beyond Death in Emily Dickinson's Poem “I Died for Beauty”

    1592 Words  | 4 Pages

    I have heard people say that Emily Dickinson used dashes whenever she could not find the words to fully express what she meant. While this is true in one sense, it is preposterous in another. Dickinson's careful and clever choice of words does not seem to be consistent with someone who would simply enter a dash once at a loss for words. Punctuation is a necessary tool for all writers to create an effect that words alone can not. In “I died for beauty,” the dashes force the reader to pause at certain moments to intensify the suspense and sheer gravitas of what is being said. For example, in the opening line “I died for Beauty—but was scarce,” there is no word that could be placed in this line to more strongly convey the narrator's death for beauty to ...

    Read More

  • Comparing and Contrasting Dickinson’s Poems, Because I Could Not Stop for Death and I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10th December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. As a young child, she showed a bright intelligence, and was able to create many recognizable writings. Many close friends and relatives in Emily’s life were taken away from her by death. Living a life of simplicity and aloofness, she wrote poetry of great power: questioning the nature of immortality and death. Although her work was influenced by great poets of the time, she published many strong poems herself. Two of Emily Dickinson’s famous poems, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died”, are both about life’s one few certainties, death, and that is where the similarities end.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson Forever Is Composed Of Now Poem Analysis

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    The choice of using simple words might be obscure for a logical poet as Dickinson, however she uses simple words as a technique to develop a complex sentence with a strong meaning. An example of this is her fourth sentence in which she states, “And Latitude of Home-“, where she uses a multi-definition word to intertwine with a simple word to convey a deep message. Dickinson uses a different definition of the word latitude than the obvious definition or meaning (Barnet 501). Essentially, this message means that every one’s “now is different” in the “space” that exists in home (Priddy

    Read More

  • Started Early - Took My Dog, by Emily Dickinson

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    The waxing and waning action of the text might symbolize the constant cycles of life. The fact that the text recedes then elongates in rhythm make the reader think the speaker of the poem is not sure what steps to take in their life. The speaker might not have convinced him or herself about the suicide attempt. Many suicidal thoughts are stopped short of action and then thought about later. Dickinson writes in this style to show the opposing forces of every situation. Suicide would likely be the most contemplated decision the narrator has ever had to make.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    Crumbley, Paul. “Emily Dickinson’s Life.” Modern American Poetry. National Biography Online. 2000. Web. 31 January 2014.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poetry

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagery is a big component to most works of poetry. Authors strive to achieve a certain image for the reader to paint in their mind. Dickinson tries to paint a picture of ?death? in her own words. Thomas A. Johnson, an interpretive author of Dickinson's work, says that ?In 1863 Death came into full statue as a person. ?Because I could not stop for Death? is a superlative achievement wherein Death becomes one of the greatest characters of literature? (Johnson). Dickinson's picture to the audience is created by making ?Death? an actual character in the poem. By her constantly calling death either ?his? or ?he,? she denotes a specific person and gender. Dickinson also compares ?Death? to having the same human qualities as the other character in the poem. She has ?Death? physically arriving and taking the other character in the carriage with him. In the poem, Dickinson shows the reader her interpretation of what this person is going through as they are dying and being taken away by ?Death?. Dickinson gives images such as ?The Dews drew quivering and chill --? and ?A Swelling of the Ground --? (14, 18). In both of these lines, Dickinson has the reader conjure up subtle images of death. The ?quivering an chill? brings to the reader's mind of death being ...

    Read More

  • Death in Auden’s Funeral Blues, Forche’s Memory of Elena, and Dickinson’s Last Night that She lived

    1681 Words  | 4 Pages

    Dickinson, Emily. “The last Night that She lived.” Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 843.

    Read More

  • Themes of Death and Immortality in Emily Dickinson's Poetry

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Emily Dickinson’s poetry there is a reoccurring theme of death and immortality. The theme of death is further separated into two major categories including the curiosity Dickinson held of the process of dying and the feelings accompanied with it and the reaction to the death of a loved one. Two of Dickinson’s many poems that contain a theme of death include: “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” and “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.”

    Read More

More about Analizing Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Open Document