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

“If You Were Coming in the Fall”, is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson wrote a a lot about love. Dickinson fell in love with an unknown person when she was in her early twenties. Unfortunately, Edward Dickinson did not approve of Emily's unknown lover. Later on in Dickinson's life, she began to fall in love with a man named Otis Lord. Dickinson and Lord wrote each other constantly. Dickinson refused Lord's marriage proposal, but they continued to write to each other. Emily Dickinson's, “If You Were Coming in the Fall”, portrays a theme of love and time, a tone of distress, and a certain purpose.

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.

In line eight Dickinson also alludes to a “King.” An interpretation of this can be an allusion to God, coming down from Heaven and taking Dickinson with Him. In the third stanza she illustrates the temporary nature of the world. She gives away her belongings and is ready to leave her time

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.

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 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.

Her themes of love, death, immortality, change, and uncertainty are not “recondite ones” (Vendler), but her unique viewpoints on them are. Her syntax is not that of an author trying to hammer a message into their audience’s heads, but rather imitates the natural flow of a person’s thoughts and the disorganization of it, almost in a Modernist or Post-Modernist way. Ironically, the only thing Dickinson portrays as certain and constant is a cycle of change. Indeed, every time period is a time period of change, and today seems like that more than ever. However, Dickinson’s poems show that change is not necessarily something to fear, as so many have, but something to accept, and perhaps even

When Dickinson uses the phrase “That will not state its sting.” She is comparing time to a bee’s sting and how it hurts more because of the uncertainty. That is is so true and relatable considering I’ve recently had to move over three thousand miles away from the love of my life. Another example of her diction improving the poems meaning and power on me is when she says “If only centuries delayed, I’d count them on my hand.” Dickinson is belittling the time gap of centuries by putting only in front of it.

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.

By analyzing Dickinson’s anxious tone and the paraphrases in the poem “If You Were Coming in the Fall,” I can tell that the theme is waiting for someone makes a person anxious. In the poem the quote “I’d brush the summer by [w]ith half a smile and half a spurn” shows that they are not happy. This is because they are not with the person they are waiting for. In addition “If I could see you in a year, I’d wind the months in balls,” shows that the person is so anxious they would let the

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.

Emily Dickinson, recognized as one of the greatest American poets of the nineteenth century, was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts (Benfey, 1). Dickinson’s greatness and accomplishments were not always recognized. In her time, women were not recognized as serious writers and her talents were often ignored. Only seven of her 1800 poems were ever published. Dickinson’s life was relatively simple, but behind the scenes she worked as a creative and talented poet. Her work was influenced by poets of the seventeenth century in England, and by her puritan upbringing. Dickinson was an obsessively private writer. Dickinson withdrew herself from the social contract around the age of thirty and devoted herself, in secret, to writing.

This poem by Emily Dickinson is much harder to figure out compared to her usual poems. She writes about a topic that is not normally written about at this time especially by a woman. At first glance, it is thought that this poem is about liquor and all of the bad things that go along with it, when in all reality it is a poem about sheer happiness. Dickinson is speaking not of a high derived from any alcoholic beverage, but rather of one acquired from life itself.

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,

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.