Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

1830 – 1886

Critic Irving Howe says that Dickinson “is the author of 1,775 poems, most of them bad, a goodly number fine, and a few dozen great.” Although she was an extremely prolific poet, only seven of her poems were published during her lifetime, and her lifestyle has drawn about as much attention as the poetry itself.

There is considerable controversy about her life. Many of her biographers (especially her family) have found congenial the picture of the “New England Nun--the old maid recluse suffering from unrequited love who hid in on the stairway to eavesdrop on conversations or skittered through the garden at night dressed in solid white.”

Dickinson did spend most of her life in Amherst, but her social interaction was probably grater than many biographers have suggested. The confusion over her biography is reflected in the proposed interpretations of many her poems, including the following:

My life closed twice before its close—

My life closed twice before its close—

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

The Norton anthology says the one who tried to “teach her immortality” was the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, a Presbyterian minister, whom she first met in Philadelphia in 1854. Other critics maintain that it is Ben Newton, a young law apprentice who died of tuberculosis. Others say it is Leonard Humphrey. In the last decade of her life, she is said to have fallen in love again with Judge Otis P. Lord.

Dickinson’s verse patterns are primarily those of the English hymn. English hymns consisted of quatrains and were arranged:

4 lines of 8 syllables each (long meter) (iambic tetrameter)

4 lines of alternating 6 and 8 (common meter) iambic trimeter/tetrameter

4 lines of two 6, one 8, one 6 (short meter) iambic trimeter/tetrameter/

trimeter.

Most of her poems are in common meter. A few, but some of her best, are in short meter.

Dickinson strived for economy in her verse (few poems are over twelve lines). Because of this desire for conciseness, to communicate only the kernel of thought, her diction consists primarily of monosyllabic and disyllabic words--frequently those of homespun New England life. She clipped sentences and omitted conjunctions. She is often cryptic because she strived to capture the “telegraphic thought.” One critic calls her “half-idiotic.”

Dickinson was innovative in rhyme. She uses eye rhyme (prove/love; daughter/laughter) and approximate rhyme. After her death, Lavinia, Dickinson’s sister, turned over her manuscripts to a neighbor, Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd, who together with Dickinson’s old friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson published in 1890 Poems by Emily Dickinson. Several other volumes appeared in the next fifty years. In 1955 Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson, using what is supposed to be Dickinson’s original style, which includes a great many capitalizations, dashes of various lengths and angles instead of periods, commas, and semicolons. Your text uses this version. Later, James Reeves published a collection using standard punctuation and spelling.

Some of Dickinson’s poems are celebrations of nature through the senses in an almost hedonistic or pantheistic fashion. An example is “I taste a liquor never brewed”:

I taste a liquor never brewed

I taste a liquor never brewed -- From Tankards scooped in Pearl -- Not all the Vats upon the Rhine Yield such an Alcohol! Inebriate of Air -- am I -- And Debauchee of Dew -- Reeling -- thro endless summer days -- From inns of Molten Blue -- When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove's door -- When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams" -- I shall but drink the more! Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -- And Saints -- to windows run -- To see the little Tippler Leaning against the -- Sun --

Her major concerns, though, are death, God, and immortality—sometimes intertwined within the same poem. Her poems about death often explore the physical demise of the body, the mystery of what lies after death, and the break in communication between life and death.

Just lost, when I was saved!

Just lost, when I was saved!

Just felt the world go by!

Just girt me for the onset with

Eternity,

When breath blew back,

And on the other side

I heard recede the disappointed

tide!

Therefore, as One returned, I

feel

Odd secrets of the line to tell?

Some Sailor, skirting foreign

shores—

Some pale Reporter, from the

awful doors

Before the Seal!

Next time, to stay!

Next time, the things to see

By Ear unheard,

Unscrutinized by Eye—

Next time, to tarry,

While the Ages steal—

Slow tramp the Centuries,

And the Cycles wheel!

In this poem, the speaker has died momentarily, but then has returned to life and yearns to know the secrets beyond the grave.

“I’ve seen a Dying Eye” also explores the mystery of what lies beyond death:

I’ve seen a Dying Eye

I’ve seen a Dying Eye

Run round and round a Room—

In search of Something—as it

seemed—

Then Cloudier become—

And then—obscure with

Fog—

And then—be soldered down

Without disclosing what it be

“Twere blessed to have seen—

The poem below emphasizes the break in communication between the living and the dead:

If I shouldn’t be alive

If I shouldn’t be alive

When the Robins come,

Give the one in Red Cravat,

A Memorial crumb.

If I couldn’t thank you,

Being fast asleep,

You will know I’m trying

With my Granite lip!

In the following poem, Dickinson appears to find something admirable (at least tongue-in-cheek so) about death. The speaker says that at least death is truthful. There’s no duplicity there, as there often is in human relationships.

I like a look of Agony

I like a look of Agony,

Because I know it’s true—

Men do not sham Convulsion,

Nor simulate, a Throe—

The Eyes glaze once—and that is Death—

Impossible to feign

The Beads upon the Forehead

By homely Anguish strung.

In the following poem, Dickinson debunks the idea that death is some grandiose experience with a chorus of angels, etc. Death as presented here as mundane, with the speaker’s final vision being that of a buzzing fly.

I heard a Fly buzz—when I died--

I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air—

Between the Heaves of Storm—

The Eyes around –had wrung them dry—

And Breaths were gathering firm

For the last Onset—when the King

Be witnessed—in the Room—

I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable—and then it was

There interposed a Fly—

With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—

Between the light—and me—

And then the Windows failed—and then

I could not see to see—

In one of her most often quoted poems, Dickinson personifies death as a suitor. Note the expressed belief in immortality here as well as a common belief that one’s life flashes before him at the point of death.

Because I could not stop for Death--

Because I could not stop for Death—

He kindly stopped for me—

The Carriage held but just Ourselves—

And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess—in the Ring—

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—

We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed US—

The Dews drew quivering and chill—

For only Gossamer, my Gown—

My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground—

The Roof was scarcely visible—

The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—‘tis Centuries—and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses Heads

Were toward Eternity—

The following poem is an elegy of sorts, written about the young daughter of a neighbor of the Dickinson family who died on May 3, 1866.

The last Night She lived

The last Night that She lived

It was Common Night

Except the Dying—this to Us

Made Nature different

We noticed smallest things—

Things overlooked before

By this great light upon our

Minds

Italicized—as ’twere.

As We went out and in

Between Her final Room

And Rooms where Those to be

alive

Tomorrow were, a Blame

That Others could exist

While She must finish quite

A Jealousy for Her arose

So nearly infinite—

We waited while She passed—

It was a narrow time—

Too jostled were Our Souls to

speak

At length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot—

Then lightly as a Reed

Bent to the Water, struggled

scarce—

Consented, and was dead—

And We—We placed the

Hair—

And drew the Head erect—

And then an awful leisure was

Belief to regulate—

The poem alludes to several common themes—how death makes those around the dying notice details that they had often taken for granted, how the viewers are jealous of the girl in a manner of speaking because they will be left to deal with the grief, and—in the last stanza—how the viewer’s beliefs will be challenged by this tragedy.

In religion, Dickinson rebelled against strong Puritanical and Calvinistic influence of Amherst. Evidence suggests that she was neither a practicing nor an orthodox Christian. Almost any religious position can be proved by her poetry. At times she rebels against Christianity, at times she quarrels with Christ, and at other times, she shows a strong religious consciousness.

Many critics say that in the end she acquired a vivid sense of God--that she found in that world a permanence lacking in her human relationships.

The poem below shows her ambiguous attitude toward God. He is both burglar and banker as well as father. He gives and takes. As you might expect, this poem is often read in a biographical context.

I never lost as much but twice

I never lost as much but twice,

And that was in the sod.

Twice have I stood a beggar

Before the door of God!

These are the days when skies

Resume

The old—old sophistries of

June—

A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the

Bee—

Almost thy plausibility

Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness

Bear—

And softly thro’ the altered air

Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh Sacrament of summer days,

Oh Last Communion in the

Haze—

Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to

partake—

thy consecrated bread to take

and thine immortal wine!

The following poem may be read as a statement on God’s insensitivity to death or as an acceptance of the natural pattern life and death, such as we find in the works of Robert Frost.

Apparently with no surprise

Apparently with no surprise

To any happy Flower

The Frost beheads it at its play—

In accidental power—

The blonde Assassin passes on—

The Sun proceeds unmoved

To measure off another Day

For an Approving God.

The poem below is a particularly nice work. In the first stanza, the speaker appears to bemoan the fact that, unlike in the time of Jesus, modern man has no tangible evidence of his existence. In the second stanza, the speaker concludes that a belief in God has a good effect on human behavior, and thus the “ignis fatuus” (the Holy Ghost) is better than nothing at all. “Ignis fatuus” is the “false light” that appears over marshes when marsh gas ignites.

Those—dying then,

Those—dying then,

Knew where they went—

They went to God’s Right Hand—

That Hand is amputated now

And God cannot be found—

The abdication of Belief

Makes the Behavior small—

Better an ignis fatuus

Than no illume at all—

The poem below deals with the separation of the body and the soul upon death:

Departed—to the Judgement—

Departed—to the Judgement—

A Mighty Afternoon—

Great Clouds—like Ushers—leaning—

Creation—looking on—

The Flesh—Surrendered—Cancelled—

The Bodiless—begun—

Two Worlds—like Audiences—disperse—

And leave the Soul—alone—

In the poem below, Dickinson treats death as a cruel joke that God plays on man:

I know that He exists

I know that He exists.

Somewhere—in Silence—

He has hid his rare life

From our gross eyes.

‘Tis an instant’s play.

‘Tis a fond Ambush—

Just to make Bliss

Earn her own surprise!

But—should the play

Prove piercing earnest—

Should the glee—glaze—

In Death’s—stiff—stare—

Would not the fun

Look too expensive!

Would not the jest—

Have crawled too far!

In the following poem, Dickinson speaks somewhat deprecatingly about the concept of prayer. The speaker doesn’t find prayer an appropriate substitute for God’s actual presence.

Prayer is the little implement

Prayer is the little implement

Through which Men reach

Where Presence—is denied them.

They fling their Speech

By means of it—in God’s Ear—

If then He hear—

This sums the Apparatus

Comprised in Prayer—

Dickinson rarely uses literary allusions, but in this last poem, she alludes to Longfellow’s “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” in which Miles wished to court Priscilla Mullins, but sends John Alden to speak for him, and Priscilla falls in love with Alden. In the first stanza, God is compared to Miles Standish and Jesus to John Alden. In the second stanza, the speaker talks about the “convenience” of the concept of the Trinity—in order to avoid the dilemma faced by Longfellow’s characters, it is conveniently concluded that God and Jesus are the same.

God is a distant—stately Lover—

God is a distant—stately Lover—

Woos, as He states us—by His Son—

Verily, a Vicarious Courtship—

“Miles”, and Priscilla”, were such an One—

But, lest the Soul—like fair “Priscilla”

Choose the Envoy—and spurn the Groom—

Vouches, with hyperbolic archness—

“Miles”, and “John Alden” were Synonyme—

If you would like to read further in Dickinson, click on http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/emily_dickinson/poems for her complete works.