Emily Dickinson's Poem 'Telling The Truth'

Truth allows humans to stand-alone. When they find truth they are able to be one against the whole. "Being in a minority even a minority of one did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not

The capitalized words are the key words of the poem. They add weight to the lines, tipping the balance of the poetic rhythm. The reader is invited to ponder over their meaning and significance (Miller 59). The capitalization gives Dickinson’s poems concreteness and symbolism (Miller 58). The reader’s attention is drawn to these capitalized words. They form an image in the reader’s mind. For example, in the first example, the capitalized words are Slant, Winter, Afternoons, Heft, Cathedral, and Tunes. These words alone evoke the image of a cold and lonely day which burdens the heart like the heavy and mournful tones of an organ. Just words “Winter Afternoons” carry sensations of frigidness, bleakness, and loneliness. “Winter Afternoons” set the scene and describe the mood (Porter 141). The words “Ethereal Blow” strike the reader as an oxymoron. Ethereal implies something light, delicate, and

Dickinson’s poem unfolds truth to society’s power over a woman’s identity. The poem has an angry tone read from the first line, “I’m ceded- I’ve stopped being Their’s-” (1). A defiant and condemning voice aimed at an ambiguous, authoritative figure who is embodied by the capitalized, plural pronoun “Their.” Dickinson’s refusal to exactly specify who “Their” is, demonstrates the power and relationship “Their” has over the speaker. Dickinson interchanges this pronoun with “They” (2) as the poem progresses on, and this larger entity is associated as the church, family, society, etc. because of Dickinson’s references to “church” (3) and “childhood” (6) within the opening stanza. Dickinson’s narrator is tired of being put aside or controlled by others. This angry tone begins to grow louder as Dickinson beings conveying this message and while the poem moves through stanzas uncovering the narrator’s identity.

“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.

The next seemingly arbitrary decision is Dickinson's capitalization. The capitalization at the beginning of the sentence must be capitalized; therefore, we'll focus on the capitalizations that lie within each sentence. In this poem, each of these words is a noun. Past this simple reading, what may we deduce from these capitalizations? Each stanza presents a different set of capitalized objects

bringing forth the truth, but in the end, the battle for truth creates more trauma than it’s

TRUTH-We can not escape the truth it is better to face the truth head on and deal with it.

Dickinson is by no means stating that we should keep the truth completely hidden; however, she is quickly asserting her opinion of how the truth needs to be told. In telling the truth one must slant or hold back from embellishing all of the details of that particular truth. The ensuing line, “Success in Circuit lies” (1.2), parallels the first lines’ slant with a curvature of a circuit. A circuit goes perfectly around an area eventually returning back to the same spot. Dickinson conveys that only certain details should be let out, eventually giving you the truth as a whole. Also the words chosen in this line seem have reason to be grouped together. The word “lies” (1.2) is paired within a sentence with the word “Success” (1.2), giving the connection that lies may be needed to obtain success. The poem is trying to point out that truth and lies both can become truth, if they are presented in the correct circuit. The third line, “Too bright for our infirm Delight” (1.3), uses a metaphor to compare truth to light. This metaphor is full of imagery, associating truth to something that stimulates one’s sense of sight. Something that is too bright hurts the eyes, thus the metaphor conveys that telling the truth in its entirety can at times be painful. Finally, the last line of this stanza, “The Truth’s superb surprise” (1.4), personifies the truth as having the ability to give a surprise. A

somewhere if we are to distinguish the lies that tell truths form the just plain

The last two lines of the poem are a timid reflection on what might happen “Had I the Art to stun myself/ With Bolts—of Melody!” (23-24). The idea that creation is a power that can get loose and injure even the creator illuminates why in this poem the artist positions herself firmly as a mere spectator. In these first two poems, we meet a Dickinson who is not entirely familiar to us—even though we are accustomed to her strong desire for privacy, these poems can be startling in the way they reveal the intensity of Dickinson’s fears. She is, after all, shrinking from what is dearest to her—nature, one of her favorite subjects, becomes a harsh judge, and poetry, her favored medium of communication, can suddenly render the reader “impotent” and the writer “stun[ned]” (19, 23). The extremity of her positions in shrinking from the small and beautiful things she loves creates the sense that this is just the beginning of a journey by leaving so much room for change.

their lack of consideration for what is true shows that they have no intention to tell the truth, or

According to the newscasters, people telling the truth will look away to the left while liars look away to the right. Also, individuals who are telling the

The first issue is what actually is truth? There are many things that we perceive to be true, depending on perspective or our beliefs, which differ from one person to the next, known as

Poetry has the ability to expand minds and put its reader in touch with the world around them. Emily Dickinson attempts to convey the power of poetry in her poem I Dwell in Possibility. She pours her passionate feelings about poetry into this poem and drives her point home with a comparison to prose. Using language, structure, and symbolism, Emily Dickinson’s I Dwell in Possibility effectively articulates how poetry can broaden horizons and provide an escape from the mundane.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, into an influential family in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father helped found Amherst College, where Emily later attended between 1840 and 1846. She never married and died in the house where she was born on May 15, 1886.