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 …show more content…
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
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.
“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.
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 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.
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.
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
The poem dramatizes the gradual process of falling apart. Dickinson speaks abstractly of the crumbling of the soul as a dimension of time, rather than being instantaneous. Man falls as a result of a continuous and small-scale decay of the spirit by way of evil inclinations. The complex structure of the poem reflects the underlying figurative meaning. The poem consists of three quatrains in iambic meter, alternating between tetrameter and trimeter. The poet’s use of hyphens guides the reader to read the passage slowly and thoughtfully. The slow pace mirrors the theme of slow decay. The most obvious factor of the poem’s structure is the seemingly random capitalization of mid-sentence nouns. The stress and personification of certain nouns emphasize the small elements of crumbling. The figurative meaning of the poem is built upon by showing that all things can be broken down, slowly but surely.
Franklin, R. W. ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. PS1541 .A1
The average reader cannot help but be affected by Dickinson’s style. The capitalized words draw the reader’s attention. They highlight important key words of the poem. The dashes set apart specific words and phrases, forcing the reader to slow down while reading. The dashes compel the reader to contemplate and ponder over the lines. Thus, whether or not Dickinson had a conscious purpose in her unconventional capitalization and punctuation, they have an undeniable effect on the rhythm of the poem and the perception of the reader.
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
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...
The purpose of this paper, then, is to discuss Dickinson's poetry with reference to the Bible‹especially, the Book of Revelation. One of her poems poses a question: "To that etherial throng / Have not each one of us the rig...
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 ...
Along with the selected reading above, Dickinson’s work reflects a strong reverence for the natural world. This appreciation for nature is conveyed through a number of references and reoccurring images. In poem #627,