Emily Dickinson Review and Interpretation of Poems #449, #465, and #712

Emily Dickinson was an American poet from the 19th century was not recognized as poet until after her death. She wrote an abundance of over two thousand poems. Dickinson was not a social person. She mainly kept to

Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote during the 19th century. Her work is both emotional and thought-provoking and her lack of social interaction during her lifetime give her poetry a personality that is vastly different from other poets of her time. Desmond Powell writes in “Emily Dickinson” “She was not seeking new forms; she was only writing in a form inherent in her, a form quite different from the conventional ones employed by the other poets of her day.” Dickinson was not worried about copying the work of other poets, but instead concentrated on making an art form that was entirely her own and that has managed to stand the test of time even to this day. As one of the most recognizable names in American literature, she is truly

Emily Dickinson’s poetry arose during a time of much deep questioning going on in the literary world. Many of her poems lend themselves to various interpretations, as Dickinson looks at the world through a variety of perspectives. Dickinson wrote concisely and broke the traditional rules of writing poetry, and in doing so often wrote in one way but meant something entirely different. Poem 340, or “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” is one of these such poems that has no clear answer and is ultimately left ambiguous for the reader to interpret. This essay will highlight how this poem can be interpreted in the formal elements of rhythm, rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, and how these elements can affect the meaning of the poem.

Not much is known about Emily Dickinson’s personal life. Which is why other authors and readers lead to much curiosity. While never popular in her lifetime for her writings, Dickinson has become one of the widely know poets in history. Dickinson’s poems reflect her early and lifelong

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean” (Socrates). What does it mean to be this type of poet? How can someone accomplish such success in poetry, the answer is just two words Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson spent a large portion of her life in isolation, not because she was forced to or because she was ill, Dickinson simply wanted to be alone and because of her isolation she became one of the greatest female poets of all time. Emily Dickinson set the bar high for other female poets and created some of the most renowned poems in the world. The two poems “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” and “Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant” are drastically different poems that tell two different stories, but there are some aspects that cause them to be similar: Imagery, tone, and the statement that the two poems make.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is one of the best poets in America. She is known for her uncommon way of writing poetry. There was a great deal of problems going on in her life. She spent mostly her entire life living in her home and only left unless she needed to do so. Unlike other poets, she did not have any order to her writings. She just wrote what she was feeling. Her work was anonymously published and later became known after her death.

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”,

Two literary pieces, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by, Dylan Thomas and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Dickinson and Thomas have presented two different ideas on the topic and concept of death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.

She hears a fly buzzing, an onomatopoeia, and through similes in line three and four she compares stillness in the room to “like the Stillness of the Air—Between Heaves of Storms.” The dynamic between the buzzing fly, hovering around the room signifying her death, and the tension of the room sets up the gravity of her situation. In the second stanza Dickinson uses synecdoche to illustrate the people around her mourning her death. She uses “eyes” and “breaths” as the main subject of the sentence. An interpretation of this is to blur the explicit mention of people and instead focus again on the senses or visual and auditory imagery.

There is a lot more to poetry than just the words themselves. “What William Shakespeare called, “the mind’s eye” also plays a role” (Borus34). What that means is that your experiences and thoughts will add to your understanding. Dickinson had an active mind and a style so unique and unusual with her writing. Something that was very unusual about her writing was that she never put a title to her poems. Just like many poets, she used a wide assortment of literary devices such as, metaphor, simile, alliteration, and symbolism. “Unlike many writers of her time, Dickinson did not use conventional rhyme, capitalization, or punctuation” (Borus36). For example, she would put dashes not just at the end of a line, but also

One of Emily’s Dickinson’s amazing gifts as a poet was her ability to write her poems

Not only is the fly keeping the speaker grounded on earth, the fly comes “Between the light - and [the speaker]” (14). Dickinson employs a simple creature, such as a fly, in this poem to distinguish how the littlest distraction in one’s life can exhaust the mind and relinquish any subconscious power the person may have had, such as their own spirituality. The fly symbolizes the speaker’s distraction from her own death and after being disrupted by the fly she can no longer “see to see” (16). The speaker’s incapability to find her way to Heaven after the interposition of the fly displays the lack of confidence in her own spirituality. Also, the fly may symbolize the unappealing side of death. While Christians would focus on their spirit being accepted into the gates of Heaven, the speaker’s mentality is still rooted in the Earth; her mind is elsewhere, and while it should be leaving the mortal life on earth, she cannot get past the sound of a fly buzzing in her

Emily Dickinson was a poet who used many different devices to develop her poetry, which made her style quite unique. A glance at one of her poems may lead one to believe that she was quite a simple poet, although a closer examination of her verse would uncover the complexity it contains.

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense

Emily Dickinson is one of the most interesting female poets of the nineteenth century. Every author has unique characteristics about him/her that make one poet different from another, but what cause Emily Dickinson to be so unique are not only the words she writes, but how she writes them. Her style of writing is in a category of its own. To understand how and why she writes the way she does, her background has to be brought into perspective. Every poet has inspiration, negative or positive, that contributes not only to the content of the writing itself, but the actual form of writing the author uses to express his/her personal talents. Emily Dickinson is no different. Her childhood and adult experiences and culture form