Dickinson is an American poet who lived between 1830 and 1886. She spent most of her later days in isolation. It’s right to assert that Dickinson never lived a normal womanly life-she never married. She was quite a recluse, even most of her poems spoke of death and immortality. Her contribution to Literature is one to applaud; her poems, not unique but also numerous (Farr, 1996). She was passionate about nature and used a lot of natural elements such as flowers, insects, scent’ weather and animal, among others to sweeten her poetry. Moreover, she was one of the major proponents of romanticism as most of her poems and literary works glorified nature. This essay discusses Emily Dickinson’s life about five of her poems how her life experiences inform her themes;
“I taste a liquor never brewed” is one of the poems through which Dickinson communicates greatly about her life experience. She uses a summer setting and fills it with the activity of getting herself drunk on a liquor superior to any other that’s brewed from the grapes. The liquor she refers to does not drink. Dickinson is drunk in the summer air as well as the dew. She compares her drinking capacity to that of other consumers such as the bees and butterflies. She indicates that she’ll not stop consuming even when other consumers cease to drink. That this love for her “drink” will attract the eyes of the saints and angels that stand with God in heaven. “I taste a liquor never brewed” indicates Dickinson’s fascination with the weather and how she longs to stay forever in summer. For the record, Dickinson enjoyed her days at her father’s castle while on summer holiday away from school. She seemed to be taken up by her nature joy that she never left to visit her friends. Instead, she sent correspondences with all she wanted to share about. She never seemed to want anyone to poison her air as she inhaled summer.
Second is “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!”. It seems to many that Dickson wrote this poem and left it as an all-praise masterpiece. It speaks affection, union and pulls imagination to a focal point of the reader’s mind. The more natural way to understand its content is by looking at it from a sexual perspective. However, Dickinson being a loner with no real established intimacy, it wouldn’t come as a surprise that deep inside her shy mind dreamed of the experience of lying beside a lover and spending wild nights in union with them (D'Arienzo, 2006). Dickinson communicates and emphasizes her wish to experience something exciting for as many nights. She seems to want to satisfy a desire so intense. The poem also points out that the speaker has already lost an opportunity for unity, so all they can do is wish for it. Dickinson speaks of Eden- a place thought to be in heaven; known to have been inhabited by the world’s first lovers, Adam and Eve. It brings out the kind of spiritual atmosphere Dickinson associated herself.
‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’- another Dickinson poem speaks of mental health, hints on death as well as the afterlife. Dickinson explores the theme of the peculiarity of the mind sparking off madness through a gradual process. The poem points to end as the gloomiest human life experience (Bianchi, 1970). Dickinson uses symbols of death and funeral to put her message across. The actuality of the death experiences in this poem does not show up in reality-they go about whirling in the mind of the victim. She speaks of mourners who are treading in a theatre and exert weight on the brain of the speaker, bringing about a gradual madness as the brain of the speaker falls apart. All the heavy sorrows of the mourners are domineering and daze the mind. She goes ahead and points out the burial where the sanity of the victim is finally buried. Dickinson is thought to have been epileptic, and her constant allusions to death spell out a life of depression. It is little wonder that this might have inspired the writing of this poem.
“Success is counted sweetest” points to fame. Dickinson talks about the complications of human desire. To think a bee would explain the poem best, fame is sweet but tingling- “both song and sting” and wings- it can fly away. The poem suggests that losers can only appreciate success. She speaks of nectar seekers; those in dire need can taste its sweetness. She as well hints on competition that must exist for one to capture this sweet thing, success. Dickinson, though not a woman who came out to publicly celebrate her victory, was one who believed in progress and was in no hurry to stop exploring her intellect with her skill of writing (Murray, 1996). She grew up in an affluent home and most likely knew what it meant to win or arrive at victory.
“Because I could not stop for death” is a forlorn piece with a deceased speaker who recounts their experience with the journey they shared with Death. The poem is rather meditative and sees the reader gently through a tunnel of death. Dickinson presents the possibility of human immortality. To think that death could pick up a human being and ride through the town with them…death and the speaker is both moving in the same direction. It’s almost like the speaker submitting to death and following in a relaxed way- perhaps the speaker was aware that she was about to die and had come to terms with it. Together, they go places and finally come to their destination-the grave. The speaker’s tone is calm and pulls the reader to the belief that death may not be a hard experience. It can be endured by even the deceased. There is a weight lifted off the reader’s head who hasn’t experienced death yet. Dickinson was known for her “love” for the death topic. She seemed to have studied it well enough through experience- lost her dearest ones and life kept on throwing such misfortunes at her, which might explain why she was a recluse.
Despite the thoughts of Dickinson’s poems reflecting strangely on the readers and being hard to understand, R. P. Blackmur, a literary critic thinks that Dickinson’s poems define her style, looking at the short length and simplicity of most of them (Donoghue, 1986). Blackmur also believes that “other critics are justifiable for their thoughts on Dickinson’s work being cryptic when the reader thinks of them as well as the poems were very unhappy in expression. The short lines she uses for her poems reflect an unmelodious mood and tone. The curt brevity effect is even magnified by Dickinson’s verbal dislike of being cheap.” It is easy for a reader to notice a uniqueness in Dickinson’s poems. Her different moods while writing the poems are also much noticeable by the reader. Blackmur views Dickinson’s poems as significant and tells of its inspiration- more so for the poems where she describes the inner beauty of nature, showing its effect on an observer sensitive about it. Dickinson had a kind of passionate resilience, which made the best of her contribution to literature through her poetry. That her strength does not exist in a few of her poems but all of them. It pulls off the idea of much care that should be taken while interpreting and scrutinizing her poems.
Irrefutably, Dickinson’s work is a significant contribution to literature in the mention of her nature of poems stringing on the right to her life experiences, which traps the code of relevance of work to people’s life experiences. It navigates over a uniqueness of style and the thought that literature can be its creation if one follows their mood to write. It blows up the idea that literature is a theory one must cram and therefore encourages resilience of the mind that should never stop thinking. This essay, as shown above, explores Dickinson’s work about her life experiences and has a great deal to do with how the mind controls the kind of air we choose to exhale- in this context, not the lungs.
Works Cited
Bianchi, M. D. (1970). Emily Dickinson Face to Face: Unpublished Letters with Notes and Reminiscences. New York: Archon Books.
D'Arienzo, D. (2006). Looking at Emily. Amherst Magazine, 56-64.
Donoghue, D. (1986). Selected essays of R.P. Blackmur. New York: Ecco Press.
Farr, J. (1996). Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice Hall International Paperback Editions.
Murray, A. (1996). Kitchen Table Poetics: Maid Margaret Maher and Her Poet Emily Dickinson: The Emily Dickinson Journal. 5(2). Pp. 285–296.
