SparkNotes() on Dickinsons Poetry

ContextAnalysisThemes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThe Individuals Struggle with GodThe Assertion of the SelfThe Power of Words and PoetryNature as a Haunted HouseMotifsThe Speakers Unique Poetic VoiceThe Connection Between Sight and SelfSymbolsFeetStoneBirdsSummary and Analyses of Selected PoemsSuccess is counted sweetest...SummaryFormCommentaryHope is the thing with feathers...SummaryFormCommentaryIm Nobody! Who are you?SummaryFormCommentaryThe Soul selects her own SocietySummaryFormCommentaryA Bird came down the Walk...SummaryFormCommentaryAfter great pain, a formal feeling comes...SummaryFormCommentaryI died for Beautybut was scarce...SummaryFormCommentaryI heard a Fly buzzwhen I died...SummaryFormCommentaryThe Brainis wider than the SkySummaryFormCommentaryStudy Questions & Essay TopicsStudy QuestionsSuggested Essay Topics

Context

Emily Dickinson led one of the most prosaic lives of any great poet. At a time when fellow poet Walt Whitman was ministering to the Civil War wounded and traveling across Americaa time when America itself was reeling in the chaos of war, the tragedy of the Lincoln assassination, and the turmoil of ReconstructionDickinson lived a relatively untroubled life in her fathers house in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she was born in 1830 and where she died in 1886. Although popular myth often depicts Dickinson as the solitary genius, she, in fact, remained relatively active in Amherst social circles and often entertained visitors throughout her life. However, she was certainly more isolated than a poet such as Whitman: Her world was bounded by her home and its surrounding countryside; the great events of her day play little role in her poetry. Whitman eulogized Lincoln and wrote about the war; Dickinson, one of the great poets of inwardness ever to write in English, was no social poetone could read through her Collected Poems1,776 in alland emerge with almost no sense of the time in which she lived. Of course, social and historical ideas and values contributed in shaping her character, but Emily Dickinsons ultimate context is herself, the milieu of her mind.

Dickinson is simply unlike any other poet; her compact, forceful language, characterized formally by long disruptive dashes, heavy iambic meters, and angular, imprecise rhymes, is one of the singular literary achievements of the nineteenth century. Her aphoristic style, whereby substantial meanings are compressed into very few words, can be daunting, but many of her best and most famous poems are comprehensible even on the first reading. During her lifetime, Dickinson published hardly any of her massive poetic output (fewer than ten of her nearly 1,800 poems) and was utterly unknown as a writer. After Dickinsons death, her sister discovered her notebooks and published the contents, thus, presenting America with a tremendous poetic legacy that appeared fully formed and without any warning. As a result, Dickinson has tended to occupy a rather uneasy place in the canon of American poetry; writers and critics have not always known what to make of her. Today, her place as one of the two finest American poets of the nineteenth century is secure: Along with Whitman, she literally defines the very era that had so little palpable impact on her poetry.

Analysis

Emily Dickinson is such a unique poet that it is very difficult to place her in any single traditionshe seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Her poetic form, with her customary four-line stanzas, ABCB rhyme schemes, and alternations in iambic meter between tetrameter and trimeter, is derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns, but Dickinson so thoroughly appropriates the formsinterposing her own long, rhythmic dashes designed to interrupt the meter and indicate short pausesthat the resemblance seems quite faint. Her subjects are often parts of the topography of her own psyche; she explores her own feelings with painstaking and often painful honesty but never loses sight of their universal poetic application; one of her greatest techniques is to write about the particulars of her own emotions in a kind of universal homiletic or adage-like tone (After great pain, a formal feeling comes) that seems to describe the readers mind as well as it does the poets. Dickinson is not a philosophical poet; unlike Wordsworth or Yeats, she makes no effort to organize her thoughts and feelings into a coherent, unified worldview. Rather, her poems simply record thoughts and feelings experienced naturally over the course of a lifetime devoted to reflection and creativity: the powerful mind represented in these records is by turns astonishing, compelling, moving, and thought-provoking, and emerges much more vividly than if Dickinson had orchestrated her work according to a preconceived philosophical system.

Of course, Dickinsons greatest achievement as a poet of inwardness is her brilliant, diamond-hard language. Dickinson often writes aphoristically, meaning that she compresses a great deal of meaning into a very small number of words. This can make her poems hard to understand on a first reading, but when their meaning does unveil itself, it often explodes in the mind all at once, and lines that seemed baffling can become intensely and unforgettably clear. Other poemsmany of her most famous, in factare much less difficult to understand, and they exhibit her extraordinary powers of observation and description. Dickinsons imagination can lead her into very peculiar territorysome of her most famous poems are bizarre death-fantasies and astonishing metaphorical conceitsbut she is equally deft in her navigation of the domestic, writing beautiful nature-lyrics alongside her wild flights of imagination and often combining the two with great facility.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

ThemesThe Individuals Struggle with God

Dickinson devoted a great amount of her work to exploring the relationship between an individual and a Judeo-Christian God. Many poems describe a protracted rebellion against the God whom she deemed scornful and indifferent to human suffering, a divine being perpetually committed to subjugating human identity. In a sense, she was a religious poet. Unlike other religious poets, who inevitably saw themselves as subordinate to God, Dickinson rejected this premise in her poetry. She was dissatisfied with the notion that the poet can engage with God only insofar as God ordains the poet as his instrument, and she challenged Gods dominion throughout her life, refusing to submit to his divine will at the cost of her self. Perhaps her most fiery challenge comes in Mine by the Right of the White Election! (528), in which the speaker roars in revolt against God, claiming the earth and heavens for herself or himself.

Elsewhere, Dickinsons poetry criticizes God not by speaking out directly against him, but by detailing the suffering he causes and his various affronts to an individuals sense of self. Though the speaker of Tell all the Truth but tell it slant (1129) never mentions God, the poem refers obliquely to his suppression of the apostle Paul in the last two lines. Here, the speaker describes how unmitigated truth (in the form of light) causes blindness. In the Bible (Acts 9:4), God decides to enlighten Paul by making him blind and then healing him on the condition that thenceforth Paul becomes a chosen vessel of God, performing his will. The speaker recoils from this instance of Gods juggernaut-like domination of Paul in this poem but follows the poems advice and tells the truth slant, or indirectly, rather than censuring God directly. In another instance of implicit criticism, Dickinson portrays God as a murderous hunter of man in My Life had stooda Loaded Gun (754), in which Death goes about gleefully executing people for his divine master. These poems are among the hundreds of verses in which Dickinson portrays God as aloof, cruel, invasive, insensitive, or vindictive.The Assertion of the Self

In her work, Dickinson asserts the importance of the self, a theme closely related to Dickinsons censure of God. As Dickinson understood it, the mere act of speaking or writing is an affirmation of the will, and the call of the poet, in particular, is the call to explore and express the self to others. For Dickinson, the self entails an understanding of identity according to the way it systematizes its perceptions of the world, forms its goals and values, and comes to judgments regarding what it perceives.

Nearly all Dickinsons speakers behave according to the primacy of the self, despite the efforts of others to intrude on them. Indeed, the self is never more apparent in Dickinsons poetry than when the speaker brandishes it against some potentially violating force. In They shut me up in Prose (613), the speaker taunts her captives, who have imprisoned her body but not her mind, which remains free and roaming. Because God most often plays the role of culprit as an omnipotent being, he can and does impose compromising conditions upon individuals according to his whim in Dickinsons work. Against this power, the self is essentially defined. The individual is subject to any amount of suffering, but so long as he or she remains a sovereign self, he or she still has that which separates him or her from other animate and inanimate beings.The Power of Words and Poetry

Though Dickinson sequestered herself in Amherst for most of her life, she was quite attuned to the modern trends of thought that circulated throughout Europe and North America. Perhaps the most important of these was Charles Darwins theory of evolution, published in 1859. Besides the tidal wave it unleashed in the scientific community, evolution throttled the notion of a world created by Gods grand design. For Dickinson, who renounced obedience to God through the steps of her own mental evolution, this development only reinforced the opposition to the belief in a transcendent and divine design in an increasingly secularized world.

Dickinson began to see language and the word, which were formerly part of Gods domain, as the province of the poet. The duty of the poet was to re-create, through words, a sense of the world as a place in which objects have an essential and almost mythic relationship to each other. Dickinsons poems often link abstract entities to physical things in an attempt to embrace or create an integral design in the world. This act is most apparent in her poems of definition, such as Hope is the thing with feathers (254) or Hope is a subtle Glutton (1547). In these poems, Dickinson employs metaphors that assign physical qualities to the abstract feeling of hope in order to flesh out the nature of the word and what it means to human consciousness.Nature as a Haunted House

In a letter to a friend, Dickinson once wrote: Nature is a Haunted Housebut Arta House that tries to be haunted. The first part of the sentence implies that the natural world is replete with mystery and false signs, which deceive humankind as to the purpose of things in nature as well as to Gods purpose in the creation of nature. The sentences second part reveals the poets role. The poet does not exist merely to render aspects of nature, but rather to ascertain the character of Gods power in the world.

For Dickinson, however, the characterizing of Gods power proved to be complicated since she often abstained from using the established religious symbols for things in nature. This abstention is most evident in Dickinsons poem about a snake, A narrow Fellow in the Grass (986), in which Dickinson refrains from the easy reference to Satan in Eden. Indeed, in many of her nature poems, such as A Bird came down the Walk (328), Dickinson ultimately insists on depicting nature as unapologetically incomprehensible, and thus haunted.MotifsThe Speakers Unique Poetic Voice

Dickinsons speakers are numerous and varied, but each exhibits a similar voice, or distinctive tone and style. Poets create speakers to literally speak their poems; while these speakers might share traits with their creators or might be based on real historical figures, ultimately they are fictional entities distinct from their writers. Frequently, Dickinson employs the first person, which lends her poems the immediacy of a dialogue between two people, the speaker and the reader. She sometimes aligns multiple speakers in one poem with the use of the plural personal pronoun we. The first-person singular and plural allow Dickinson to write about specific experiences in the world: her speakers convey distinct, subjective emotions and individual thoughts rather than objective, concrete truths. Readers are thus invited to compare their experiences, emotions, and thoughts with those expressed in Dickinsons lyrics. By emphasizing the subjectivity, or individuality, of experience, Dickinson rails against those educational and religious institutions that attempt to limit individual knowledge and experience.The Connection Between Sight and Self

For Dickinson, seeing is a form of individual power. Sight requires that the seer have the authority to associate with the world around her or him in meaningful ways and the sovereignty to act based on what she or he believes exists as opposed to what another entity dictates. In this sense, sight becomes an important expression of the self, and consequently the speakers in Dickinsons poems value it highly. The horror that the speaker of I heard a Fly buzzwhen I died (465) experiences is attributable to her loss of eyesight in the moments leading up to her death. The final utterance, I could not see to see (16), points to the fact that the last gasp of life, and thus of selfhood, is concentrated on the desire to see more than anything else. In this poem, sight and self are so synonymous that the end of one (blindness) translates into the end of the other (death).

In other poems, sight and self seem literally fused, a connection that Dickinson toys with by playing on the sonic similarity of the words I and eye. This wordplay abounds in Dickinsons body of work. It is used especially effectively in the third stanza of The Soul selects her own Society (303), in which the speaker declares that she knows the soul, or the self. She commands the soul to choose one person from a great number of people and then close the lids of attention. In this poem, the I that is the soul has eyelike properties: closing the lids, an act that would prevent seeing, is tantamount to cutting off the I from the rest of society.SymbolsFeet

Feet enter Dickinsons poems self-referentially, since the words foot and feet denote poetic terms as well as body parts. In poetry, feet are the groups of syllables in a line that form a metrical unit. Dickinsons mention of feet in her poems generally serves the dual task of describing functioning body parts and commenting on poetry itself. Thus, when the speaker of A narrow Fellow in the Grass (986) remembers himself a Barefoot boy (11), he indirectly alludes to a time when his sense of poetry was not fully formed. Likewise, when the speaker of After great pain, a formal feeling comes (341) notes that feet are going around in his head while he is going mad, he points to the fact that his ability to make poetry is compromised.Stone

In Dickinsons poems, stones represent immutability and finality: unlike flowers or the light of day, stones remain essentially unchanged. The speaker in Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (216) imagines the dead lying unaffected by the breezes of natureand of life. After the speaker chooses her soul in The Soul selects her own Society (303), she shuts her eyes Like Stone (12), firmly closing herself off from sensory perception or society. A stone becomes an object of envy in How happy is the little Stone (1510), a poem in which the speaker longs for the rootless independence of a stone bumping along, free from human cares.Birds

Dickinson uses the symbol of birds rather flexibly. In A Bird came down the Walk (328), the bird becomes an emblem of the unyielding mystery of nature, while in Hope is the thing with feathers (254), the bird becomes a personification of hope. Elsewhere, Dickinson links birds to poets, whose job is to sing whether or not people hear. In Splitthe Larkand youll find the Music (861), Dickinson compares the sounds of birds to the lyrical sounds of poetry; the poem concludes by asking rhetorically whether its listeners now understand the truths produced by both birds and poetry. Like nature, symbolized by the bird, art produces soothing, truthful sounds.

Summary and Analyses of Selected Poems

Success is counted sweetest...

Summary

The speaker says that those who neer succeed place the highest value on success. (They count it sweetest.) To understand the value of a nectar, the speaker says, one must feel sorest need. She says that the members of the victorious army (the purple Host / Who took the flag today) are not able to define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors.Form

The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimeterwith the exception of the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth stress at the end of the line. (Virtually all of Dickinsons poems are written in an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly between three and four stresses.) As in most of Dickinsons poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the stanzas only rhyme.Commentary

Many of Emily Dickinsons most famous lyrics take the form of homilies, or short moral sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe complicated moral and psychological truths. Success is counted sweetest is such a poem; its first two lines express its homiletic point, that Success is counted sweetest / By those who neer succeed (or, more generally, that people tend to desire things more acutely when they do not have them). The subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair of images that exemplify it: the nectara symbol of triumph, luxury, successcan best be comprehended by someone who needs it; the defeated, dying man understands victory more clearly than the victorious army does. The poem exhibits Dickinsons keen awareness of the complicated truths of human desire (in a later poem on a similar theme, she wrote that Hungerwas a way / Of Persons outside Windows / The Enteringtakes away), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases (e.g., On whose forbidden ear).

Hope is the thing with feathers...

Summary

The speaker describes hope as a bird (the thing with feathers) that perches in the soul. There, it sings wordlessly and without pause. The song of hope sounds sweetest in the Gale, and it would require a terrifying storm to ever abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm. The speaker says that she has heard the bird of hope in the chillest land / And on the strangest Sea, but never, no matter how extreme the conditions, did it ever ask for a single crumb from her.Form

Like almost all of Dickinsons poems, Hope is the thing with feathers... takes the form of an iambic trimeter that often expands to include a fourth stress at the end of the line (as in And sings the tune without the words). Like almost all of her poems, it modifies and breaks up the rhythmic flow with long dashes indicating breaks and pauses (And never stopsat all). The stanzas, as in most of Dickinsons lyrics, rhyme loosely in an ABCB scheme, though in this poem there are some incidental carryover rhymes: words in line three of the first stanza rhymes with heard and Bird in the second; Extremity rhymes with Sea and Me in the third stanza, thus, technically conforming to an ABBB rhyme scheme.Commentary

This simple, metaphorical description of hope as a bird singing in the soul is another example of Dickinsons homiletic style, derived from Psalms and religious hymns. Dickinson introduces her metaphor in the first two lines (Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul), then develops it throughout the poem by telling what the bird does (sing), how it reacts to hardship (it is unabashed in the storm), where it can be found (everywhere, from chillest land to strangest Sea), and what it asks for itself (nothing, not even a single crumb). Though written after Success is counted sweetest, this is still an early poem for Dickinson, and neither her language nor her themes here are as complicated and explosive as they would become in her more mature work from the mid-1860s. Still, we find a few of the verbal shocks that so characterize Dickinsons mature style: the use of abash, for instance, to describe the storms potential effect on the bird, wrenches the reader back to the reality behind the pretty metaphor; while a singing bird cannot exactly be abashed, the word describes the effect of the stormor a more general hardshipupon the speakers hopes.

Im Nobody! Who are you?

Summary

The speaker exclaims that she is Nobody, and asks, Who are you? / Are you Nobodytoo? If so, she says, then they are a pair of nobodies, and she admonishes her addressee not to tell, for theyd banish usyou know! She says that it would be dreary to be Somebodyit would be public and require that, like a Frog, one tell ones name the livelong June / To an admiring Bog!Form

The two stanzas of Im Nobody! are highly typical for Dickinson, constituted of loose iambic trimeter occasionally including a fourth stress (To tell your namethe livelong June). They follow an ABCB rhyme scheme (though in the first stanza, you and too rhyme, and know is only a half-rhyme, so the scheme could appear to be AABC), and she frequently uses rhythmic dashes to interrupt the flow.Commentary

Ironically, one of the most famous details of Dickinson lore today is that she was utterly un-famous during her lifetimeshe lived a relatively reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts, and though she wrote nearly 1,800 poems, she published fewer than ten of them. This poem is her most famous and most playful defense of the kind of spiritual privacy she favored, implying that to be a Nobody is a luxury incomprehensible to the dreary Somebodiesfor they are too busy keeping their names in circulation, croaking like frogs in a swamp in the summertime. This poem is an outstanding early example of Dickinsons often jaunty approach to meter (she uses her trademark dashes quite forcefully to interrupt lines and interfere with the flow of her poem, as in How dreary to beSomebody!). Further, the poem vividly illustrates her surprising way with language. The juxtaposition in the line How publiclike a Frog shocks the first-time reader, combining elements not typically considered together, and, thus, more powerfully conveying its meaning (frogs are public like public figuresor Somebodiesbecause they are constantly telling their name croakingto the swamp, reminding all the other frogs of their identities).

The Soul selects her own Society

Summary

The speaker says that the Soul selects her own Society and then shuts the Door, refusing to admit anyone elseeven if an Emperor be kneeling / Upon her mat. Indeed, the soul often chooses no more than a single person from an ample nation and then closes the Valves of her attention to the rest of the world.Form

The meter of The Soul selects her own Society is much more irregular and halting than the typical Dickinson poem, although it still roughly fits her usual structure: iambic trimeter with the occasional line in tetrameter. It is also uncharacteristic in that its rhyme schemeif we count half-rhymes such as Gate and Matis ABAB, rather than ABCB; the first and third lines rhyme, as well as the second and fourth. However, by using long dashes rhythmically to interrupt the flow of the meter and effect brief pauses, the poems form remains recognizably Dickinsonian, despite its atypical aspects.CommentaryWhereas Im Nobody! Who are you? takes a playful tone to the idea of reclusiveness and privacy, the tone of The Soul selects her own Society is quieter, grander, and more ominous. The idea that The Soul selects her own Society (that people choose a few companions who matter to them and exclude everyone else from their inner consciousness) conjures up images of a solemn ceremony with the ritual closing of the door, the chariots, the emperor, and the ponderous Valves of the Souls attention. Essentially, the middle stanza functions to emphasize the Souls stonily uncompromising attitude toward anyone trying to enter into her Society once the metaphorical door is shuteven chariots, even an emperor, cannot persuade her. The third stanza then illustrates the severity of the Souls exclusivenesseven from an ample nation of people, she easily settles on one single person to include, summarily and unhesitatingly locking out everyone else. The concluding stanza, with its emphasis on the One who is chosen, gives The Soul selects her own Society the feel of a tragic love poem, although we need not reduce our understanding of the poem to see its theme as merely romantic. The poem is an excellent example of Dickinsons tightly focused skills with metaphor and imagery; cycling through her regal list of door, divine Majority, chariots, emperor, mat, ample nation, and stony valves of attention, Dickinson continually surprises the reader with her vivid and unexpected series of images, each of which furthers the somber mood of the poem.

A Bird came down the Walk...

SummaryThe speaker describes once seeing a bird come down the walk, unaware that it was being watched. The bird ate an angleworm, then drank a Dew / From a convenient Grass, then hopped sideways to let a beetle pass by. The birds frightened, bead-like eyes glanced all around. Cautiously, the speaker offered him a Crumb, but the bird unrolled his feathers and flew awayas though rowing in the water, but with a grace gentler than that with which Oars divide the ocean or butterflies leap off Banks of Noon; the bird appeared to swim without splashing.FormStructurally, this poem is absolutely typical of Dickinson, using iambic trimeter with occasional four-syllable lines, following a loose ABCB rhyme scheme, and rhythmically breaking up the meter with long dashes. (In this poem, the dashes serve a relatively limited function, occurring only at the end of lines, and simply indicating slightly longer pauses at line breaks.)CommentaryEmily Dickinsons life proves that it is not necessary to travel widely or lead a life full of Romantic grandeur and extreme drama in order to write great poetry; alone in her house at Amherst, Dickinson pondered her experience as fully, and felt it as acutely, as any poet who has ever lived. In this poem, the simple experience of watching a bird hop down a path allows her to exhibit her extraordinary poetic powers of observation and description.Dickinson keenly depicts the bird as it eats a worm, pecks at the grass, hops by a beetle, and glances around fearfully. As a natural creature frightened by the speaker into flying away, the bird becomes an emblem for the quick, lively, ungraspable wild essence that distances nature from the human beings who desire to appropriate or tame it. But the most remarkable feature of this poem is the imagery of its final stanza, in which Dickinson provides one of the most breath-taking descriptions of flying in all of poetry. Simply by offering two quick comparisons of flight and by using aquatic motion (rowing and swimming), she evokes the delicacy and fluidity of moving through air. The image of butterflies leaping off Banks of Noon, splashlessly swimming though the sky, is one of the most memorable in all Dickinsons writing.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes...

SummaryThe speaker notes that following great pain, a formal feeling often sets in, during which the Nerves are solemn and ceremonious, like Tombs. The heart questions whether it ever really endured such pain and whether it was really so recent (The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, / And Yesterday, or Centuries before?). The feet continue to plod mechanically, with a wooden way, and the heart feels a stone-like contentment. This, the speaker says, is the Hour of Lead, and if the person experiencing it survives this Hour, he or she will remember it in the same way that Freezing persons remember the snow: FirstChillthen Stuporthen the letting go.FormAfter great pain is structurally looser than most Dickinson poems: The iambic meter fades in places; line-length ranges from dimeter to pentameter; the rhyme scheme is haphazard and mostly utilizes couplets (stanza-by-stanza, it is AABB CDEFF GHII); and the middle stanza is five lines long, rather than Dickinsons typical four. Like most other Dickinson poems, however, it uses the long rhythmic dash to indicate short pauses.CommentaryPerhaps Emily Dickinsons greatest achievement as a poet is the record she left of her own inwardness; because of her extraordinary powers of self-observation and her extraordinary willingness to map her own feelings as accurately and honestly as she could, Dickinson has bequeathed us a multitude of hard, intense, and subtle poems, detailing complicated feelings rarely described by other poets. And yet, encountering these feelings in the compression chamber of a Dickinson poem, one recognizes them instantly. After great pain, a formal feeling comes describes the fragile emotional equilibrium that settles heavily over a survivor of recent trauma or profound grief.

Dickinsons descriptive words lend a funereal feel to the poem: The emotion following pain is formal, ones nerves feel like Tombs, ones heart is stiff and disbelieving. The feets Wooden way evokes a wooden casket, and the final like a stone recalls a headstone. The speaker emphasizes the fragile state of a person experiencing the formal feeling by never referring to such people as whole human beings, detailing their bodies in objectified fragments (The stiff Heart, The Feet, mechanical, etc.).

I died for Beautybut was scarce...

SummaryThe speaker says that she died for Beauty, but she was hardly adjusted to her tomb before a man who died for Truth was laid in a tomb next to her. When the two softly told each other why they died, the man declared that Truth and Beauty are the same, so that he and the speaker were Brethren. The speaker says that they met at night, as Kinsmen, and talked between their tombs until the moss reached their lips and covered up the names on their tombstones.FormThis poem follows many of Dickinsons typical formal patternsthe ABCB rhyme scheme, the rhythmic use of the dash to interrupt the flowbut has a more regular meter, so that the first and third lines in each stanza are iambic tetrameter, while the second and fourth lines are iambic trimeter, creating a four-three-four-three stress pattern in each stanza.CommentaryThis bizarre, allegorical death fantasy recalls Keats (Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, from Ode on a Grecian Urn), but its manner of presentation belongs uniquely to Dickinson. In this short lyric, Dickinson manages to include a sense of the macabre physicality of death (Until the Moss had reached our lips), the high idealism of martyrdom (I died for Beauty. . . One who died for Truth), a certain kind of romantic yearning combined with longing for Platonic companionship (And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night), and an optimism about the afterlife (it would be nice to have a like-minded friend) with barely sublimated terror about the fact of death (it would be horrible to lie in the cemetery having a conversation through the walls of a tomb). As the poem progresses, the high idealism and yearning for companionship gradually give way to mute, cold death, as the moss creeps up the speakers corpse and her headstone, obliterating both her capacity to speak (covering her lips) and her identity (covering her name).

The ultimate effect of this poem is to show that every aspect of human lifeideals, human feelings, identity itselfis erased by death. But by making the erasure gradualsomething to be adjusted to in the tomband by portraying a speaker who is untroubled by her own grim state, Dickinson creates a scene that is, by turns, grotesque and compelling, frightening and comforting. It is one of her most singular statements about death, and like so many of Dickinsons poems, it has no parallels in the work of any other writer.

I heard a Fly buzzwhen I died...

SummaryThe speaker says that she heard a fly buzz as she lay on her deathbed. The room was as still as the air between the Heaves of a storm. The eyes around her had cried themselves out, and the breaths were firming themselves for that last Onset, the moment when, metaphorically, the King / Be witnessedin the Room. The speaker made a will and Signed away / What portion of me be / Assignable and at that moment, she heard the fly. It interposed itself With blueuncertain stumbling Buzz between the speaker and the light; the Windows failed; and then she died (I could not see to see).FormI heard a Fly buzz employs all of Dickinsons formal patterns: trimeter and tetrameter iambic lines (four stresses in the first and third lines of each stanza, three in the second and fourth, a pattern Dickinson follows at her most formal); rhythmic insertion of the long dash to interrupt the meter; and an ABCB rhyme scheme. Interestingly, all the rhymes before the final stanza are half-rhymes (Room/Storm, firm/Room, be/Fly), while only the rhyme in the final stanza is a full rhyme (me/see). Dickinson uses this technique to build tension; a sense of true completion comes only with the speakers death.CommentaryOne of Dickinsons most famous poems, I heard a Fly buzz strikingly describes the mental distraction posed by irrelevant details at even the most crucial momentseven at the moment of death. The poem then becomes even weirder and more macabre by transforming the tiny, normally disregarded fly into the figure of death itself, as the flys wing cuts the speaker off from the light until she cannot see to see. But the fly does not grow in power or stature; its final severing act is performed With Blueuncertain stumbling Buzz. This poem is also remarkable for its detailed evocation of a deathbed scenethe dying persons loved ones steeling themselves for the end, the dying woman signing away in her will What portion of me be / Assignable (a turn of phrase that seems more Shakespearean than it does Dickinsonian).

The Brainis wider than the Sky

SummaryThe speaker declares that the brain is wider than the sky, for if they are held side by side, the brain will absorb the sky With easeand Youbeside. She says that the brain is deeper than the sea, for if they are held Blue to Blue, the brain will absorb the sea as sponges and buckets absorb water. The brain, the speaker insists, is the weight of Godfor if they are hefted Pound for Pound, the brains weight will differ from the weight of God only in the way that syllable differs from sound.FormThis poem employs all of Dickinsons familiar formal patterns: it consists of three four-line stanzas metered iambically, with tetrameter used for the first and third lines of each stanza and trimeter used for the second and fourth lines; it follows ABCB rhyme schemes in each stanza; and uses the long dash as a rhythmic device designed to break up the flow of the meter and indicate short pauses.CommentaryAnother of Dickinsons most famous poems, The Brainis wider than the Sky is in many ways also one of her easiest to understanda remarkable fact, given that the poems theme is actually the quite complicated relationship between the mind and the outer world. Using the homiletic mode that characterizes much of her early poetrythe brain is wider than the sky is as homiletic a statement as success is counted sweetest by those who neer succeed, Dickinson testifies to the minds capacity to absorb, interpret, and subsume perception and experience. The brain is wider than the sky despite the skys awesome size because the brain is able to incorporate the universe into itself, and thereby even to absorb the ocean. The source of this capacity, in this poem, is God. In an astonishing comparison Dickinson likens the minds capabilities to the weight of God, differing from that weight only as syllable differs from sound.

This final stanza reads quite easily, but is actually rather complexit is difficult to know precisely what Dickinson means. The brain differs from God, or from the weight of God, as syllable differs from sound; the difference between syllable and sound is that syllable is given human structure as part of a word, while sound is raw, unformed. Thus Dickinson seems to conceive of God here as an essence that takes its form from that of the human mind.

Study Questions & Essay Topics

Study Questions

1.Think about Dickinsons descriptions of nature, such as in A Bird came down the Walk and A narrow Fellow in the Grass. What techniques does she use to create her indelible images? What makes poems such as these memorable despite their thematic simplicity?

Her main techniques are metaphor and a new and startling application of language; both techniques result in powerful images. In A Bird came down the Walk, Dickinson spectacularly closes the poem with a stanza equating flight through the air with movement through water, leading to the breathtaking line, Butterflies, off Banks of Noon / Leap, splashless as they swim. In A narrow Fellow, she uses surprising language to convey the impression of a snake moving (It wrinkled, and was gone) and of her own chill on seeing the snake (Zero at the Bone). Thematically uncomplicated, Dickinsons nature poems nevertheless describe important ways in which human beings interact with creatures of nature:These creatures can shy from humanity, like the Bird, or pose a threat, like the Narrow Fellow. In both cases, Dickinson creates memorable poems by closely observing details of the physical world and by vividly generating new images in the mind.

2.Dickinson is often described as a poet of inwardness. What do you think this means? How does Dickinson convey the inner workings of the mind in a poem such as I cannot live with You?

To say that Dickinson is a poet of inwardness is simply to recognize that her own thoughts and feelings are her most important subjects; moreover, her treatment of them avoids all reference to the relevant social or philosophical issues of her day. In I cannot live with You, Dickinson shows the mind as it speculates painfully on what might have been (life with the beloved, death with the beloved, heaven with the beloved) even as it acknowledges that these will never be; Dickinson indicates the despair inherent in this knowledge with the repeated rhetorical construction, I cannot . . . with You. In the final stanza, Dickinsons speaker is unable to confront the reality of her separation from her beloved, and her delicate metaphors reflect this (as in the Door ajar / That Oceans are). Ultimately, however, the speaker realizes that she cannot evade her predicament, and she ends her poem with the single word that summarizes her feelings: Despair.

3.Think about Dickinsons tone. Does she seem to be writing for other people or only for herself? How might she universalize private feelings?

Though she was a reclusive individual and a poet of extraordinary inward depth, Dickinsons poems are not simply private shorthand for her own thoughts; on the contrary, Dickinson tends to embody her own experience in universalizing language, implying two things: one, that other human beings will identify with her thoughts and feelings; and two, that her poetry will enable her audience to enter into and share her experience. Poetry, like letter-writing (she described her poems as My letter to the World / That never wrote to Me), was never a solitary endeavor for Dickinson; she always had a reader in mind, even though she did not publish during her lifetime. Her most common technique for universalizing her own experience is to present her observations in the form of homilies, short moral aphorisms, such as Success is counted sweetest / By those who neer succeed.Suggested Essay Topics

1.Compare and contrast two of Dickinsons poems that deal with the subject of death. How does Dickinson portray the fact of death in a new and startling way in each? What are her apparent attitudes about dying?

2.Throughout her poetic career, Dickinson relied largely on a single, powerfully focused style and on a single set of formal characteristics for her poems. What are some of these characteristics? How might her style be described? What is the effect of this kind of uniformity on the work of a poet with so much imaginative range?

3.Dickinsons poems often introduce an idea, then develop it with a sequence of metaphoric images. Name two examples of this kind of poem. What are some of her images? How do they work as metaphors?

QUIZ

1. What two images does Dickinson use to symbolize success in Success is counted sweetest?

(A) The nectar and the victorious army(B) The nectar and the olive branch(C) The olive branch and the laurel(D) The laurel and the victorious army

2. What does the poet describe as the Door ajar in I cannot live with you?

(A) Her eye(B) The prison window(C) The oceans(D) Gods eye

3. Who is entombed near the speaker of I died for Beauty?

(A) One who died for Fame(B) One who died for Truth(C) One who died for Love(D) Abraham Lincoln

4. Which of the following poets was Dickinsons close friend and mentor in Amherst?

(A) Ralph Waldo Emerson(B) Walt Whitman(C) William Blake(D) None of the above; Dickinson was not friends with any important poets.

5. In Because I could not stop for Death, what does the speaker pass by during her carriage-ride with Death?

(A) A schoolyard, a college dance, and a parade(B) A schoolyard, a ripened field, and a setting sun(C) A setting sun, a scarecrow, and a college dance(D) A ripened field, a battle, and a schoolyard

6. Which of the following does the bird not do in A bird came down the walk?

(A) Perch on the speakers finger(B) Eat an angleworm(C) Drink dew from the grass(D) Fly away

7. What is all we know of heaven / And all we need of hell?

(A) Love(B) Childbirth(C) Death(D) Parting

8. What can the brain absorb, according to one Dickinson lyric?

(A) The sea and all the rivers(B) The sea and the land(C) The sky and the sea(D) The sky and the sun

9. In I heard a Fly buzz, what cuts the speaker off from the light?

(A) The hand of death(B) The silhouette of her lover(C) The closing curtain(D) The flys wing

10. Where did Dickinson die?

(A) At her family home in Amherst(B) In a hospital in Rochester, Minnesota(C) In a hotel in Washington, DC(D) At sea, while traveling to visit her nephew in France

11. How many poems were discovered among Dickinsons belongings after she died?

(A) Nearly three hundred(B) Nearly 1,800(C) Nearly 8,500(D) None; the unpublished poems were never found.

12. What animal is public in Im Nobody?

(A) A bee(B) A snake(C) A bird(D) A frog

13. What does the speaker feel when she sees the snake in A narrow Fellow?

(A) Delight(B) Despair(C) A hot flash(D) A chill

Works CitedDickinson, Emily, and Joyce Carol Oates. The Essential Dickinson. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1996. Print.