Emily Dickinson - Analysis of her poems

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) chose to live alone from the rest of the world in her home; she wrote about 2000 poems from 1858. The most recurring themes concerned her interior life, especially her relationship with Nature, God, love, and death. In poetry, she ever reached originality, also a formal one: one of her characteristics is the use of the line; she breaks the quatrain kept from psalm's rhythm and from protestant's hymns. Her language is personal, rhetoric, and symbolic; she composes the meaning with few words.

She also projects her writing in a cosmic space and in universality, putting the images of the human and human violence, funerals, and deepest images. She also uses a fragmented verse, a classic style, and an archaic language.

Poem n° 49 (page 78)

This poem is about death and begging to God for mercy. Dickinson has lost so many people in her life; she is simply calling out to God "Burgaal/Burka/Father"; so while she believes in God's divinity, she's once more because she's alone, without her friends.

Poem n° 67

The speaker says that "those who ne'er succeed" place the highest value on success. She says that the members of the victorious army are not able to define victory as well as the defeated.

Poem n° 216

It gradually gets clearer as the poem progresses that the narrator is reflecting on the nature of death. Suddenly, you finally get clear that Death might not be as eternal as the poem describes, but it is merely a "sleep". Emily D. continues in the description of the tomb of alabaster chambers of the dead; there is a contrast between the laughing and the light of life and the gravity of death.

Poem n° 185

It's an exaltation from emility to Emerson (the poet exalts himself of word – Transcendentalism).

Poem n° 214

D. in this poem, reaches her imagination by writing a liquid never preceded. She's intoxicated with joy which she compares to liquor from a huge pearl. She wants to be like the clem in the hand Lord persists and even if the clem is not taken any more by the bullapples. Dickinson's craving for eternity is seen as she journeys.