Emily Dikinson

Because I could not stop for Death (712)

Because I could not stop for Death -

He kindly stopped for me - 

The Carriage held but just Ourselves -

And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility -

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess - in the Ring - 

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -

We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He passed us -

The Dews drew quivering and chill -

For only Gossamer, my Gown -

My Tippet - only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground -

The Roof was scarcely visible -

The Cornice - in the Ground -

Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses' Heads

Were toward Eternity -

Death is personified as a gentleman caller or suitor. Thomas H. Johnson calls him "one of the great characters of literature." But exactly what kind of person is he?

Is Death a kind, polite suitor? The speaker refers to his "kindness" and "civility." He drives her slowly; is this an expression of tact and consideration for her? If he is the courteous suitor, then Immortality, who is also in the carriage (or hearse) would be their chaperon, a silent one.

Is Death actually a betrayer, and is his courtly manner an illusion to seduce her? Because of his kindness in stopping for her, she agrees to go with him ("put away / My labor and my leisure too"). Is Death really cruel? She is not properly dressed for their journey; she is wearing only a gossamer gown and tulle tippet (gossamer: very light, thin cloth; tulle: a thin, fine netting used for veils, scarfs, etc.; tippet: covering for the shoulders). Is Immortality really an accomplice to Death's deception?

The drive symbolizes her leaving life. She progresses from childhood, maturity (the "gazing grain" is ripe) and the setting (dying) sun to her grave. The children are presented as active in their leisure ("strove"). The images of children and grain suggest futurity, that is, they have a future; they also depict the progress of human life. Is there irony in the contrast between her passivity and inactivity in the coach and their energetic activity?

The word "passed" is repeated four times in stanzas three and four. They are "passing" by the children and grain, both still part of life. They are also "passing" out of time into eternity. The sun passes them as the sun does everyone who is buried. With the sun setting, it becomes dark, in contrast to the light of the preceding stanzas. It also becomes damp and cold ("dew grew quivering and chill"), in contrast to the warmth of the preceding stanza. Also the activity of stanza three contrasts with the inactivity of the speaker in stanzas four and five. They pause at the grave. What is the effect of describing it as a house?

In the final stanza, the speaker has moved into death; the language becomes abstract; in the previous stanzas the imagery was concrete and specific. What is Dickinson saying about death or her knowledge of death with this change? The speaker only guesses ("surmised") that they are heading for eternity. Why does she have to guess? She has experienced life, but what does she specifically know about being dead? And why didn't death tell her? If eternity is their goal, can Immortality be a passenger? Or is this question too literal-minded?

Why does Dickinson change from past tense to present tense with the verb "feels" (line 2, stanza 6)? Does eternity have an end?

In this poem, exclusion occurs differently than it does in "The soul select 818g68i s her own society" Here the speaker is excluded from activities and involvement in life; the dead are outside "the ring" of life. As you read Dickinson's poems, notice the ways in which exclusion occurs and think about whether it is accurate to characterize her as the poet of exclusion.

I heard a Fly buzz (465)

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - 

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air - 

Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room - 

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portions of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly - 

With Blue - uncertain stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me - 

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

The death in this poem is painless, yet the vision of death it presents is horrifying, even gruesome. The appearance of an ordinary, insignificant fly at the climax of a life at first merely startles and disconcerts us. But by the end of the poem, the fly has acquired dreadful meaning. Clearly, the central image is the fly. It makes a literal appearance in three of the four stanzas and is what the speaker experiences in dying.

The room is silent except for the fly. The poem describes a lull between "heaves," suggesting that upheaval preceded this moment and that more upheaval will follow. It is a moment of expectation, of waiting. There is "stillness in the air," and the watchers of her dying are silent. And still the only sound is the fly's buzzing. The speaker's tone is calm, even flat; her narrative is concise and factual.

The people witnessing the death have exhausted their grief (their eyes are "wrung dry" of tears). Her breathing indicates that "that last onset" or death is about to happen. "Last onset" is an oxymoron; "onset" means a beginning, and "last" means an end. For Christians, death is the beginning of eternal life. Death brings revelation, when God or the nature of eternity becomes known. This is why "the king / Be witnessed in his power." The king may be God, Christ, or death; think about which reading you prefer and why.

She is ready to die; she has cut her attachments to this world (given away "my keepsakes") and anticipates death and its revelation. Are the witnesses also waiting for a revelation through her death? Ironically the fly, not the hoped-for king of might and glory, appears. The crux of this poem lies in the way you interpret this discrepancy. Since the king is expected and the fly appears, are they to be associated? If the fly indicates the meaning of death, what is that meaning?

Does the fly suggest any realities of death--smell, decay? Flies do, after all, feed on carrion (dead flesh). Does this association suggest anything about the dying woman's vision of death? or the observers' vision? Is she-- are they--seeing the future as physical decay only? Does the fly's fulfilling their expectations indicate that death has no spiritual significance, that there is no eternity or immortality for us? There are other interpretations of the fly. The fly may stand for Beelzebub, who is also known as lord of the flies. Sometimes Beelzebub is used as another name for Satan; sometimes it refers to any devil; in Milton's Paradise Lost, Beelzebub is Satan's chief lieutenant in hell. If the King whom the observers and/or the speaker is waiting for turns out to be the devil, is there still irony? How is the meaning of the poem affected by this reading? For example, does the poem become more cheerful? What would Dickinson be saying about eternity? Can the poem support more than one of these interpretations of the fly?

What is the effect of the fly being the only sign of life ("buzz") at the end of the poem? To extend this question, is it significant that the only sign of vitality and aliveness in the entire poem is the fly?

For literal-minded readers, a dead narrator speaking about her death presents a problem, perhaps an unsurmountable problem. How can a dead woman be speaking? Less literal readers may face appalling possibilities. If the dead woman can still speak, does this mean that dying is perpetual and continuous? Or is immortality a state of consciousness in an eternal present?

"I heard a fly buzz when I died" is one of Emily Dickinson's finest opening lines. It effectively juxtaposes the trivial and the momentous; the movement from one to the other is so swift and so understated and the meaning so significant that the effect is like a blow to an emotional solar plexus (solar plexus: pit of the stomach). Some readers find it misleading because the first clause ("I heard a fly buzz") does not prepare for the second clause ("when I died"). Is the dying woman or are the witnesses misled about death? does the line parallel their experience and so the meaning of the poem

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

"A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" is believed to have been written in 1865. A year later, it was published anonymously under the title "The Snake" in a journal called the Springfield Republican. The natural world is portrayed vividly throughout Dickinson's work, and this poem closely examines one of nature's most infamous creatures, the snake.

The poem begins with a description of the shock of encountering a snake. Although the poem's speaker never actually uses the word "snake," the scene is familiar enough for most readers to relate to it. The snake is almost magical as it moves, ghost-like, through the tall grass. The speaker sees only flashes of the snake's scaly skin, but there is evidence of its presence as the grass separates in its wake.

The poem goes on to illustrate how snakes can be deceptive. The word "barefoot" makes the speaker seem even more vulnerable to the serpent's potential threat. Mistaking a snake for the lash of a whip on the ground, the speaker reaches down to grab it and is startled to see it slither away.

The snake, one of the most notorious creatures in the natural world, has long been a symbol of treachery. Although the poem's speaker claims to be a lover of nature, it seems that the snake, while fascinating, is impossible to love. In fact, the speaker reacts to the snake as if it were a living manifestation of the terror of the unknown, for it is both startling and chilling.

This Is My Letter To The World

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

My Life Closed Twice Before it Closed

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close" was first published in Dickinson's posthumous third collection, Poems by Emily Dickinson, third series, in 1896. Scholars do not know when it was written. The poem has also been published in some other anthologies under the name " Parting." Like much of Dickinson's best work, this poem is simultaneously personal and universal. On a personal level, the poem's speaker is telling of the losses he or she has suffered, so painful that they were like death itself. Though the speaker has not yet experienced real, physical death, he or she cannot bear to imagine anything that could be more terrible than the two deprivations already experienced. The speaker does not tell us what these losses were, but one might imagine some bereavement-the death of a loved one, the end of a passionate affair.

On a universal level, the poem poignantly describes the great tragedy of human life, for to be human is to suffer loss. In the final two lines of the poem, Dickinson creates a brilliant paradox, a statement that seems contradictory but might really be expressing a truth. Here heaven and hell, great symbolic opposites according to conventional wisdom, come together in their relationships to the word "parting." If there is a heaven, all we know of it is that we must leave behind our loves and lives on this earth in order to enter there. At the same time, all human beings, to some degree, have known the misery of the private hell of separation and loss because that is an unavoidable part of human experience.

Permanence
With its use of the word "Immortality," this poem presents a contrast that seems simple at first but more complex as it is examined more closely. The poem deals with the fact that life ends-one of the few things that is certain about life. The speaker of the poem says that her life has been cut short twice, and that she expects it to happen at least once more at life's end. The ironic thing is that life will eventually be limited by the soul's limitlessness- its immortality.

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close" is written in two quatrains, or stanzas of four lines each, arranged in iambs. The iamb is a metric foot of two syllables in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second stressed. It is the basis for the most common line pattern in English verse.

The first and third lines of each quatrain are in iambic tetrameter , which means that there are four iambs in each line ("tetra" meaning four). In the alternate, and rhyming, lines, Dickinson changes to a three-foot meter called iambic trimeter ("tri" meaning three).

There's a certain slant of light,

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

I like to see it lap the miles,

I like to see it lap the miles,

And lick the valleys up,

And stop to feed itself at tanks;

And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,

And, supercilious, peer

In shanties by the sides of roads;

And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,

Complaining all the while In horrid, hooting stanza;

Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;

Then, punctual as a star,

Stop--docile and omnipotent-

At its own stable door.

Vocabulary

prodigious: enormous;

supercilious: condescending, arrogant, proud;

Boanerges: a name Christ gave to the disciples James and John, meaning "sons of thunder"; also, a loud preacher or orator;

docile: obedient, submissive; omnipotent: all powerful.

Analysis of Poem

Adopting a childlike wonder and enthusiasm, Dickinson plays with the metaphor of the train as an "iron horse." In her day, the similarities would have had a vividness and an immediacy that have been lost in ours (after all, how often do you use a horse for transportation?). The charm of the poem has not changed, however, even though in our day the phrase "iron horse" has become a cliche.

Enjoying this poem requires a willingness to be delighted by the ingenuity, appropriateness, and whimsy of the detailed comparison.

What words and images describe a horse, e.g., "lap"? Do they accurately describe the characteristics and movements of the train as well as of a horse?

Note her use of sounds:

Alliteration:

"like," "lap," "lick"

"supercilious," "shanties," "sides"

"horrid, hooting"

"star," "stop," and "stable"

"docile" and "door"

Other repeated sounds:

"stop," "prodigious," "supercilious," and "pile"

Is there a reason why Dickinson emphasized these particular words? For instance, are they important words? Are they connected by meaning?

What qualities is Dickinson emphasizing in the horse/train metaphor? Is the presentation of this machine favorable or unfavorable? Is she presenting it as alien, threatening? does she make it familiar by incorporating it into nature and everyday life? or does she achieve some other effect(s)?

After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes

Poem lyrics of After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes by Emily Dickinson.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Toombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone

This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow
First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go

Dickinson is an astute student of human psychology and responses; her range may be narrow, but it is profound. Dickinson brilliantly recreates the suffering we undergo after some terrible, excruciating event in our lives. The specific cause of the torment does not matter; whatever the cause, the response is the same, and, in this poem, the response is what matters.

She traces the numbness experienced after some terrible blow. Is numbness one way we protect ourselves against the onrush of pain and against being overwhelmed by suffering? She is discussing emotional pain, but don't we respond similarly to a physical blow with numbness before pain sets in? This psychological dynamic has another parallel, an electrical circuit breaker. Just as a dangerous surge of electricity will trip a circuit breaker and cut off the electricity, so a surge of anguish will trip our emotional "circuit breaker" temporarily, so that we don't feel the pain.

The experience is one that all of us will undoubtedly endure at some time or other and may be one you have already endured.

Stanza 1

She uses alliteration for emphasis: f sounds in line 1, s sounds in the rest of the stanza. H sounds tie together "Heart" and "He." Notice the alliteration in the next stanzas; sometimes it involves only two words.

This poem has no speaker, no "I." The sufferer is dehumanized, perhaps until the last two lines. The sufferer is an object in line 1; the formal feeling "comes" upon or acts on her or him; the sufferer is passive, submissive. Then the sufferer is described in terms of body parts--nerves, heart, feet. The gender of the sufferer is not indicated. Is depersonalization one technique for showing emotional deadness? In my discussion of this poem, I will refer to the sufferer as "she," because of the awkwardness of constantly repeating "sufferer" or "he or she."

Dickinson captures the numbness with "formal feeling," "ceremonious," "like tombs," and "Stiff Heart." The numbness is a lack of feeling; perhaps it would be more accurate to say a lack of connection with our feelings or a disconnection from emotions. Consider how much feeling or responsiveness is suggested by the word "formal," how much feeling is involved in ceremony, especially ceremony associated with "tombs" or death, and how much a "stiff" heart can feel.

The individual asks a question about Christ ("He"). Christ of course symbolizes agony and is the ultimate suffering human being. The question can be read in more than one way. (1) The blow was so horrific that the sufferer is confused about whether the crucifixion was hers or Christ's. (2) The agony, which the sufferer is cut off from but knows is there, is so acute that the sufferer wonders whether the agony of the crucifixion is hers or Christ's. Paradoxically, numbness or having no feelings is itself an agony. In numbness, time becomes distorted; we lose our sense of time. We perceive no end to this state of agonized numbness. So she is unsure whether her numbness began only yesterday or centuries ago.

Stanza 2

The feet (means of movement) represent going about daily routines ("ground, or air, or ought"). But we do this in a "mechanical" and a "wooden" way--further dehumanization and deadness. "Ought" may be read as meaning ""nothing," like zero; or it may stand for obligations, that is, all the things we ought to do. Which possibility do you prefer and why? Or, do you have yet another reading? "Regardless grown" means having lost regard or concern for things or living.

Finally, there is the irony of feeling an emotion which is "quartz contentment." Obviously, "quartz contentment" is an oxymoron. How much feeling does quartz have? To emphasize the quartz-ness of the "contentment," Dickinson adds that it is "like a stone." And how much feeling does this simile suggest?

Just looking at the poem reveals how this stanza differs from the first and third stanzas. They are both four lines; this stanza is five lines. Why might Dickinson have chosen to make this stanza longer? The way to think about this question is to consider the meaning of the stanza. Is making the stanza longer, which emphasizes it and also makes it "feel" a little longer and slower when we read it, appropriate to the meaning? If this extra line does not further in any way the idea expressed in this stanza, then the device may have been a mistake.

Stanza 3

The time of numbness has been shortened from the century of stanza one; its end is nearing. However, to the sufferer time hangs heavy ("lead") or drags slowly. So "hour of lead" is also an oxymoron.

With line 2, the full force and danger of experiencing the agony are introduced--"if outlived." The sufferer may not survive the pain. The poem closes with a simile or comparison of the sufferer to "freezing persons." "Freezing," as opposed to "frozen," indicates action that is currently happening, that is in process or not yet completed. The sufferer has moved on to the next stage and is undergoing the freezing or releasing of the agonized feelings. Does the fact that Dickinson uses the plural "persons," rather than the singular "a person," emphasize the universal application of the process she is tracing?

What is the "letting go" that freezing persons face? Does this merely mean letting go of the numbness to be flooded by pain? Or does the sufferer face a more terrible possibility? Will the pain overwhelm permanently, so that identity, the life itself, are overwhelmed by it and the individual is lost in it forever, as in the phrase "if outlived"? Do the words "remembered if outlived" indicate survival because of "remembered"? To remember is to have survived. However, the hour of lead is remembered only "if outlived"; does this phrasing suggests that survival is not guaranteed?

The soul selects her own society

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

This poem about friendship or of love, if you prefer, illustrates why Dickinson has been called the poet of exclusion. The poem describes choosing a friend (or lover), and rejecting (excluding) all others. Do you feel a difference in her presentation of these two actions, selecting and rejecting? does she emphasize selecting the friend more than rejecting all others, or is the act of excluding emphasized?

Dickinson presents the individual as absolute and the right of the individual as unchallengeable. In this poem, the soul's identity is assured. The unqualified belief in the individual and in self-reliance is characteristically and quintessentially American.

This poem also illustrates Dickinson's tendency to write lines in units of two. If you look at the lines, you will see that all the lines in this poem are organized in units of two.

Stanza 1

In lines 1 and 2, what sound is repeated? Is she emphasizing key words with this alliteration?

Dickinson has the "soul" doing the choosing. What aspects or part of the human being does "soul" represent? For example, the stomach would represent appetite and hunger or express our physical needs; the brain, as we discussed in class, our rational or intellectual side. Does using "soul" give a high or a low value to the way this individual selects friends? Does she have admirably high standards or is she despicably vain and insensitive?

The phrase "divine majority" is interesting. "Divine" does more than just continue the image of "soul." It confers status (what higher status or rank could one have?), and status is an important idea in Dickinson's poetry. We must now consider the meaning of "majority." Majority has several meanings: (1) more than half, (2) the age of legal adulthood, no longer a minor, (3) the military rank of major, (4) superiority (an obsolete meaning today). Which definition or definitions are meant here? Think about how each one fits into the meaning of the poem and how it adds to the effect of the poem and choose. It is possible, in a poem, for all these meanings to be intended.

What kind of a gesture is shutting the door? Is it, for example, an action that leaves open the possibility of change, or is it a final action? What are the connotations of the word "obtrude"? Does it suggest a charming interruption, an offensive action, or some other type of behavior on the part of the people who have been excluded?

Stanza 2

The soul is not won by worldly rank or power. A number of words indicate status: chariot, low gate, emperor, kneeling, mat. Who has the superior worldly status? Is there a suggestion of status and superiority in some other scale of values? Consider that the emperor has come to her, for his chariot is at her gate. Is there a hint that he is courting her?

In line 3, Dickinson eliminates words; a careless reader might think that it is the emperor who is unmoved, a confusing reading since he has come to her and is kneeling before her. Dickinson has omitted the subject and verb, which she stated explicitly in line 1, "she notes." It is the soul who is unmoved by the emperor's kneeling before her.

Stanza 3

Dickinson depicts the rigor and the finality of the soul's choice. The numerous field ("ample nation") she has to choose among is contrasted with the narrowing of her choice, "one." What is the effect of "ample" and "nation"? Having chosen, the soul closes the "valves" of her attention. Does the soul have choice or control over valves? Do closed valves allow anything in? Would her valves let anyone in? Is the phrase "like stone" relevant here? What is like stone--the soul's choice, her attention, or the valves? What qualities do we associate with stone--warmth, cold, softness, flexibility, hardness? Is it a coincidence that the poem ends with "stone" or is it appropriate? Openings and closings get more attention than or stand out from the rest of a text because of their position.

The last point I want to make concerns meter and line length. In every stanza, the first line is longer (has more syllables and feet) than the other three. The second and fourth lines are shorter (have fewer syllables and feet). However, in the last stanza, the second and fourth lines are shorter than in the preceding stanzas; each line has only two syllables. This exceptionally short line calls attention to itself; these lines sound hard, emphatic, and final, an appropriate effect for the idea expressed in these lines.

Much madness is divinest sense

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

The date that "Much Madness Is Divinest Sense" was written has been guessed as 1862, but nobody knows for sure because the poem was not published until almost thirty years later, in 1890, after Dickinson's death. Her poetry was first introduced to the public through the efforts of friends and relatives who discovered her poems, corrected her punctuation, designated titles, and modified some of Dickinson's meanings so as not to offend her audience. It was more than forty years before her original poems were handed over to the United States Library of Congress, where they were thoroughly examined and Dickinson's original versions were restored. The only editing that was done for the later publications was to assign location numbers to each full piece as well as to every poem fragment. "Much Madness" was given the number 435.

"Much Madness Is Divinest Sense" was published in Dickinson's first collection, which was simply called Poems (1890). This poem stands wide open to a variety of interpretations. It can be said to represent her sense of humor, or rebellion, as well as her sense of frustration as an intelligent female living in a world that was dominated by dictatorial males. The poem can also reflect her anger, for although she was described as quiet spoken and demure, Dickinson did not hold back her strongest sentiments when it came to writing them. Read in another view, the poem could be taken to express Dickinson's fear of literal madness.

The poem is deceptively brief and at first glance appears simple. However, within its eight lines is hidden a universal theme that runs so deep that more than a hundred years later its significance is still fresh, its impact is still sharp, and its expressed emotion is still controversial. This poem is so contemporary that Robert Hass, former United States poet laureate (1995-1997), chose to read "Much Madness Is Divinest Sense" to President and Mrs. Clinton at a celebratory meeting in the White House in 1998.