To Better Understand The Poem “If You Were Coming In The

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

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

The speaker is trying to convey the struggle of being half blind. In this poem Dickinson often displays possession. At one point she tells about her life before, then she transitions to what she's missing after the loss of half of her eye sight. Meanwhile, Dickinson makes claims on things she can not literally possess. An example of this are lines 10-12 which say “the meadows- mine- the mountains- mine- all forests- stintless stars-.” Throughout the poem you hear the speaker longing for her sight. The reader comments explaining that sight is so precious and mentions in the poem that if she could have her sight back, she would die.

The narrator believes you do not have to attend church to be spiritual and that common practice can be done in a peaceful place such as the orchard in her yard. The last two lines of the poem state, “So instead of getting to Heaven, at last- / I’m going, all along” (Dickinson 639). I interpreted this as the long journey to heaven has become a huge part of her life. It is not just a look into the future, but a continuous look in the present. The symbols Dickinson uses in this poem are by far the highlight of this short piece of poetry. In the first stanza, a bobolink and orchard are used to replace things that modern churches value as sacred and holy. Those natural occurrences are used by Dickinson to show her love for nature. More examples of this are shown in the second stanza. The narrator uses her own “sexton” to call her holly time instead of a brass bell to call church service. This is important to analyze as yet another natural occurrence that highly defines the authors writing style.

This imagery paints a clear picture of someone who is desperately waiting for time to pass, and it conveys the experience in a way that is understandable for the audience. In addition to the use of imagery, the author also employs copious amounts similes. For instance, in the last two lines of her poem, Dickinson pens: “It goads me like the Goblin Bee,/ That will not state its

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.

The tone seems reflective, as if the narrator is retelling the story over, having thought about it many times. There is one point when irony is used—the last stanza is full of confusing words that contradict each other and are certainly not what one would expect after reading the preceding line. I feel the rhetorical situation is the narrator telling a story, perhaps something that happened long ago, and reflecting on it. Dickinson’s use of dashes—though she uses them frequently in all poems—assists to the feeling of story-telling. There are a few occasions throughout the poem when the use of dashes gives the idea of the narrator pausing and adding in a little extra information, maybe something that helps the reader understand the situation more. I think the reader is having a one-on-one meeting with the narrator, though the reader is never formally or specifically addressed. I think it could be that the narrator has gone off on a bit of a tangent, and is perhaps talking almost to his or herself, and glances back to the reader every once in a while to make sure he or she is still paying attention.

When people think of Emily Dickinson, they think of a white dressed, ghostly woman hidden in the corridors of home, writing poem after poem. They do not think of the actual person Emily was. Emily Dickinson grew up in a rich, social, scholarly environment. She could have chosen many paths that would have led her to a completely different life, but because of circumstances, the social, high energy girl with a sense of humor became isolated by her own choice. Though Emily Dickinson’s depression is romanticized, sickness, social life, and death led her to seclusion and deep poems.

Until Dickinson was in her mid-twenties, her writing mostly took the form of letters, and a surprising number of those that she wrote from age eleven onward have been preserved. Sent to her brother, Austin, or to friends, these generous communications overflow with humor, narration, invention, and reflection. Indeed, the loss of friends, whether through death or cooling interest, became a basic pattern for Dickinson. Much of her writing, both poetic and epistolary, seems premised on a feeling of abandonment and a matching effort to deny, overcome, or reflect on a sense of solitude. In 1858 Dickinson began assembling her manuscript-books. She made clean copies of her poems on fine quality stationery and then sewed small bundles of these sheets together at the fold. Over the next seven years she created forty such booklets and several unsewn sheaves, and altogether they contained about eight hundred poems. Dickinson sent more poems to her sister-in-law than to any other known correspondent. In those years Dickinson experienced a painful and unclear personal crisis, partly of a romantic nature. The sad and pleading drafts of her second and third letters to the unidentified person she called “Master” are probably related to her many poems about a loved but distant person, usually male. There has been much speculation about the identity of this

I think that this peom is using personification to tell the story. Emily Dickinson is saying that the hills and forests can be dressed in many colors, but when it turns to winter, it "undresses". This poem has to do with cycles of change because it is talking about the seasonal changes in life.

The speaker is an omnipresent narrator for the life of “anyone” and his love, “noone”. They are a couple ostracized by society, ignored by everyone but the children. Their situation reflects Cumming’s scorned bohemian lifestyle. The phrase “spring summer autumn winter” repeats throughout the poem indicating passage of time (3). Another repetition is, “(with up so floating many bells down)” (2). Bells are symbol of beginnings and endings, of weddings and funerals (Hunt). Together, “anyone” and “noone” mature in their love, paying less attention to the monotony of the “pretty-how town” and the people who rejected them. When “anyone” dies, “noone” dies as well, and the “busy folk buried them side by side” (27). “Anyone” and “noone” are buried both physically and mentally; time goes on and the couple are forgotten by the townspeople more focused on the dull and loveless work of reaping and sowing

The poem starts with Dickinson admitting to her unawareness of the struggles faced by those who cannot see in the first stanza by stating, “Before I got my eye put out / I liked as well to see- / As other Creatures, that have Eyes / And know no other way-” (1-4). The overall tone of the first stanza is slow and mellow, for she is mourning over her loss. She uses the imagery of having her “eye put out” (1) to express her loss of sight. The unique expression grabs the attention of the reader in an interesting way immediately. Dickinson then goes on to explain how she took her sight for

Two of Dickinson’s universal techniques are metaphor and the fresh application of language; both techniques result in powerful images, and can be seen in two of her poems that focus on nature themes, “ A Bird came down the Walk” and “narrow Fellow.” She closes the poem, “ A Bird” with a stanza equating flight through the air with movement through water,

The turning point happens in the fourth stanza and the tone of the speaker changes. In first three stanzas, the feeling of the speaker is comfortable and calm while staying with death; but in the fourth stanza, she seems to become a little bit nervous. The closer she gets to the destination, the more nervous she seems to be. “The Dews drew quivering and chill-/For only Gossamer, my Gown-/My Tippet-only Tulle-” (lines 14-16 Dickinson) After passing the speaker’s different stages of life, death and the speaker enter a strange place that is cold, wet and dark. The speaker complains that her clothes are unable to keep her away from the coldness and the dewdrop, which indicates that she is not brave enough to face her destination of the trip. Even though the speaker shows that she is not afraid of death, she still feels a little uncomfortable. However, when she finally arrives her destination of the trip, she seems to recover her peace of mind.