In Emily Dickinson’s poem #336, the narrator feels a strong sense of despair and laments at having lost the physical ability to see in one eye. The narrator reflects upon the importance of sight in experiencing nature and finds a better appreciation for it now that she has lost her sight. By the end of the poem however, the narrator experiences transcendence, as she comes to the realization that through the act of imagination she is able to see far more than the limited view her eyes provided her with. Through the act of poetic writing, the narrator is able to capture the beauty of nature and engrave in into her soul. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s excerpt from “Nature”, he alludes to the significance in sight when it comes to it being able to merge the human soul with nature to create perfect unity, and as such he lays the groundwork for Dickinson’s ideas that are presented within her poem. Though Dickinson’s poem may initially seem transcendental, it can also be interpreted as a mixture of Emerson’s transcendental ideas and those that support the notion of imagination. Dickinson’s poem serves as a response to Emerson’s ideas because she adds on to his thoughts and unites his idea that there is oneness present in the world with the notion that imagination and sight serve as a bridge that connects human consciousness with nature to create this oneness that Emerson believes in.
In the first stanza, the narrator says, that “I got my eye put out” (1), showing that she can now only see from one eye because of the singular use of eyes. Because she only talks of having lost sight in one eye, it can be assumed that she laments the limited vision that is now provided by her remaining eye. The narrator’s fragmented and limited vision caused b...
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...eart would split, but because she is able to see nature through her imagination she is safe from those effects, shown when she says, “So safer-guess-with just my soul” (18) While Emerson uses only sight to form a connection with nature, Dickinson uses both sight and imagination to connect people’s souls to nature when she says, “…with just my soul open the window pane”(19); the eyes are said to be the windows that lead to one’s soul, so through this statement Dickinson shows that there is a correlation between imagination, sight, and soul because through all of them one is able to become one with nature. Through the very act of writing this poem Dickinson reveals that poetic writing is another form of reaching oneness with nature.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. "Before I Got My Eye Put out – (336)." Poetry Foundation. Poetry
Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
When one reads Emily Dickinson, one is expecting a piece of writing which is full of dread and discontent in the world. This is why at first glance poem number 569, or "I reckon- When I count at all-" one instantly feels taken aback by the apparent positive imagery that is found within the writing. However upon close reading one makes a realization that the poem is just as dark as her other pieces, if not even more upsetting. Although the beginning of the poem implies the idea of poets being creators, the last stanza undermines this idea and instead portrays the image of a poet questioning if it is possible that they are unintentionally filling the minds of their readers with false hopes and ideas about the Heavens and beauty, rather than being truthful with them; leading the masses to a false sense of security in God and the Heavens through the use of their artistic language; making this image the most important one in the poem.
Dickinson’s Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one’s own mind, and other human beings.
Nature is the means for God and humanity to be reunited wholly. Emerson's enlightenment in the woods and his appreciation of natural beauty is quite profound. By becoming reconnected to the innocence, beauty and purity of nature Emerson had a revelation. He found himself closer to God. Perhaps Emerson is attempting to persuade us into fostering a greater respect for the natural world? He seems to be displeased with the "culturization" of wilderness.
Much has been said about Emily Dickinson’s mystifying poetry and private life, especially during the years 1860-63. Allegedly it was during these years that the poetess, at the most prolific phase of her career, withdrew from society, began to wear her “characteristic” white dress and suffered a series of psychotic episodes. Dickinson tended to “theatricalize” herself by speaking through a host of personae in her poems and by “fictionalizing” her inner life as a gothic romance (Gilbert 584). Believing that a poem is “the best words in the best order” (to quote S.T. Coleridge) and that all the poems stemming from a single consciousness bring to surface different aspects / manifestations of the same personal mythology, I will firstly disregard biographical details in my interpretation of Dickinson’s poems 378, 341 and 280 and secondly place them in a sort of “continuum” (starting with 378 and ending with 280) to show how they attempt to describe a “plunge” into the Unconscious and a lapse into madness (I refrain from using the term “journey,” for it implies a “telos,” a goal which, whether unattainable or not, is something non-existent in the poems in question). Faced with the problem of articulating and concretizing inner psychological states, Dickinson created a totally new poetic discourse which lacks a transcendental signified and thus can dramatize the three stages of a (narrated) mental collapse: existential despair, withdrawal from the world of the senses and “death” of consciousness.
Emily Dickinson was one of America’s great poets. Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1,800 poems and many letters. Most of her poetry was not published until after she died. Only about 10 out of thousands of poems were published. In 1865, Dickinson isolated herself from the outside world. Only her family and friends knew about her writing. She was very shy. Dickinson got to write because their maid Maggie Maher did extra work around the house that Dickinson should have been doing (Borus, 14-23). She is known for her famous epoms “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Much Madness”, “If I can stop” and, “I Heard A Fly Buzz” and many others famous poems”. Emily Dickinson wrote about death, nature, pain, truth, religion, and love using unique styles to convey her themes.
The main concept which permeates the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson is that “the fundamental context of our lives is nature” (Richardson, Jr., Emerson and Nature 97). Emerson presents his theory of nature and its relation to man in three essays spanning almost a decade: Nature (1836), “The Method of Nature” (1841) and “Nature” (1844). There are many common threads connecting these works. One of the most notable is Emerson’s belief in the interconnection between all things – between all natural phenomena as well as between nature and the soul. Also, there exists behind and beyond Nature a Spirit from which all things originate. It is the invisible which gives rise to the visible and embodies truth and beauty. Bringing these two ideas together, Emerson shows how it is possible for man to access this unseen world through nature by using the faculties Nature has bestowed upon him. However, during the years spanning the production of these works, Emerson’s conception of nature changes. The result is three distinctive theories of nature which shift in tone from Nature’s idealism, to the disillusionment of “The Method of Nature”, to the pragmatism of “Nature”. With each piece, Emerson is asking different questions which illustrate the fundamental ways in which his characterizations of nature have been altered.
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.
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.
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 Elizabeth Dickinson was a very talented poet. Her poems contained deep emotions and continue to amaze her readers. She was born in Amherst Massachusetts on December 10, 1830 to Attorney Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Her mother was very emotionally accessible. Dickinson was an energetic and outgoing child. She attended Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Her father took her out of school after a year at Mount Holyoke because he thought she had enough education.
There are a few themes that are presented throughout Emily’s poems, one of themes was nature. Many poets during Dickinson time wrote about nature, but Dickinson looked at nature differently than they did, and wrote about it in a different way then they did. In a lot of her poems she writes about the mystery of nature and its qualities, while also marveling at it. Emily spent much of her time studying nature and the various aspects of it. One example of a poem where she talks about nature is “A bird came down the walk.” In this poem the bird is moving around and is in action. This bird is also oblivious to a person watching it. Emily’s point in writing this poem is to say that as the person is not seen then nature keeps moving along in its random and informal way (Borus: 44-73).
Emerson shows the reader how a person without this knowledge of writing is omitted from expressing the beauty of nature. He tells us that the poet has the incredible ability to create images by his words to illustrate the things that we observe. Emerson believes that the poet uses his words to represent beauty (1648). The world is beautiful and it is the poet's job to paint his view of this in his words. "... but it is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but beauty is the creator of the universe..." (1648).
Both of the authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson represent similar opinions through different types of writing. Emerson himself is more extrinsic while Dickinson represents herself motivated intrinsically. Moreover, both of the authors are inspired from different sources; Emerson finds himself inspired from the outside world, while Dickinson’s inspiration comes from an unknown force within her body. Emerson represents and shows masculinity in his writings while using fierce language, while on the other hand Dickinson represents a feminine side. Even though both of authors convince us in a way that they are very different from each other while we look at their theories and writings, but in the end we find their faith very similar. I will argue ambiguities that are found on their writings toward faith and their rejection of religious authority.
...er already confused and chaotic mind, her thought process leads her to thinking about death and hopelessness of being healed. Hopkins’s poem starts out differently, with him thinking that there was nothing that could be worse than what he was going through, but in the process of searching for relief, he discovers there is no relief with death. His poem comes to the same conclusion as Dickinson’s, the hopelessness of having no cure to save them. The ending to Dickinson’s second poem is similar to this that after her descent into insanity, there is no hope for her of ever going back to reality. In these three poems, imagery plays a large part with helping the author describe their thoughts and situations, which increases the feeling the reader has because it seems more lifelike. The three poems begin at various places, but end with the revolving theme of hopelessness.
Emily Dickinson was an American poet, born in Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Emily later fell in love with a married preacher. He then, moved away with his family. It has been said that after that happened Emily became a recluse. Emily’s poems are unique because she uses unusual punctuation, for example she used dashes in place of commas. Although, her poems were very good she made her family promise her that they would burn them after she died. Emily died on May 15, 1886, her family then decided they would publish all of her poems. She wrote almost 1800 poems in total. Her poems often had themes of death and some of her poems were about love too.