From her appearance and habits to her unique style of poetry, I think it is safe to say that Emily Dickinson was an unconventional woman.
A neighbour of Emily (since this is a blog, I think first names are appropriate) wrote to her parents and described “the lady whom all the people call the Myth” as being mysterious, seclusive and odd. Beginning in her early twenties, Emily began to dress in white and only leave her house on very rare occasions. But along with all the frowns, gossip and strange looks, this mysterious unconventionalism soon grew to be admired. She began to prove that being abnormal and somewhat weird had its perks.
With how unusual and intriguing her poems are, I wasn’t surprised to read about the many prominent figures that came and went from her house. I found, as I’m sure many of these figures did, her short, blunt stanzas refreshing (esp. after reading Whitman), challenging and strange. I enjoyed how she forces us to twist and turn our heads in order to make any sense out of what she’s trying to say.
In “Hope is the thing with feathers,” she makes us think of hope like a bird in order to communicate that hope never fails us. It is always there, strongest when we need it the most, and it never asks for our support. It leads us to believe that without hope, the soul would be lost.
It caught me off-guard when I got further into the reading and realized how some of her poems contradict the other through her use of paradox. It seems ad if she likes to use these paradoxes to rattle our minds and possibly unsettle any firm opinions or beliefs we have. Again, she prides herself in breaking the conventional.
Some of her poems made me think that love was something she desires, while others sounded like she desires solitude even more. The same could probably be said about religion. She speaks of heaven in a joking/mocking sort of way in many of her poems, such as “God permits industrious angels.” Each one ends with her admitting that she must have missed the opportunity to go. When describing heaven in “A little road not made of man,” there is a sense of disappointment that she believes she cannot make it there:
If town it have, beyond itself,
‘T is that I cannot say;
I only sigh, --no vehicle
Bears me along that way.
I thought this had a taste of Transcendentalism in it, where the importance of spiritual reality is the only reality that exists. “With shouts of joy to nobody/But his seraphic self!” (“Before you thought of spring”)
Lastly, I also recognized a theme of individualism in Emily’s poetry that forced me to think back to Whitman’s style. “I” is often the subject, where the poem is being expressed in first-person perspective.
It’s all I have to bring today,
This, and my heart beside (“It’s all I have to bring today”)
or
I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own. (“I held a jewel in my fingers”)
Not only does this make Emily stick out as a poet with innovative form and language, but it also highlights her poetry with themes specific to American literature. There may be some poems where I was completely lost in knowing how to interpret them, but Emily’s innovative and experimental style makes me admire her for striving for the unconventional.
Paradox: yes. But how do you think her individual, her lyric "I", really compares to Whitman's? Could you imagine them trying to have a conversation about poetry or life?
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some good points. In reading the poems you quote at the end, however, the first lines of "It's all I have to bring today" struck me as a bit strange. She follows "this" by "and my heart beside" -- so what does she mean by "this" if not her heart? I don't know the answer, but I'm open to hearing what you or someone else has to say about it. Is she referring to herself, her mind, her soul? Something else entirely?
ReplyDeleteTo answer you, Dr. Fruhauff, I can't imagine Whitman and Dickinson agreeing on the definitions of life and poetry for all the contrasts we noted today in class, much less having a conversation about them.
I find myself more and more interested by the amount of self-contradiction we see in both Dickenson and Whitman - Whitman comes from an almost relativistic standpoint in terms of morality and his perception or reality, maybe something comparable to Pope's "universal good." Dickenson on the other hand seems to focus on absurdity - at least that's the taste much of her work leaves in my mouth. I'd almost dare to call them foils of one another, but I'd like to see more argument first and take a closer look at all the work with that in mind.
ReplyDeleteCould you expound on what meaning you're using for the word "absurd," Lyle? I'm not sure if you're talking philosophically or literally. I would argue that Dickinson is most definitely not absurd in the literal sense of being irrational, merely pointing out the inconsistencies and paradoxes in life.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the paradoxes in Emily Dickinson's work are specifically intentional. Sometimes both sides are true at different times, in different ways. Since no one has a completely consistent, rational view of life from birth to death, perhaps the poems overall just reflect the changing feelings and beliefs of one individual throughout a portion of her lifetime.
ReplyDelete