Selected poems from The Household Book of Poetry on similar topics as Emily Dickinson’s poetry have a wildly different tone than Dickinson’s poetry. Her poetry is much darker and more depressing than the poems by her contemporaries.
Sarah Roberts’ “The Voice of the Grass” is an innocent poem extolling the positives of nature, in which she describes how grass grows everywhere. Dickinson has poems about nature as well, but the tone, while a bit playful, is somewhat darker. For instance, in “Apparently with no surprise,” Dickinson writes of the destruction of a “happy Flower” by frost (ln 2-3). By focusing on the destructive rather than the generative power of nature, Dickinson is already taking a different tone. However, she ends this little poem by describing how the sun is “unmoved” by and how God “approve[s]” of this act (ln 6, 8). Dickinson demonstrates that nature accepts this evil act of killing a “happy Flower,” and that God even desires that it be so. She seems to be pointing out that life is supposed to have tragic and dark aspects, that there is no need to pretend nature and life are all perfectly happy and sweet.
Nora Perry’s “Loss and Gain” deals with a death, a common subject that Dickinson seems to tackle. However, Perry’s poem has a much lighter feel, focusing on the bittersweet memories and how time brings the only lessening of grief. On the other hand, Dickinson seems to focus on the dead, such as in “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” and “I died for Beauty – but was scarce.” By focusing on the dead in their graves, Dickinson provides more morbid images than Perry does by focusing on the living’s memories of the dead. Even in “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died,” Dickinson, though there is no grave, still focuses on the individual who is dying. She does not paint a pretty picture of death by talking of “stillness,” the “last Onset,” giving away one’s possessions, and being unable to see (ln 2, 7, 9-10, 16). She looks at what happens when one dies, while Perry offers the idea that the dead are better off and that time will lessen the hurt (ln 12, 21-22). Dickinson’s poems don’t seem to take this pat response to death that Perry’s do.
Dickinson, Emily. “Poems.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Ed. Nina Baym, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, and Arnold Krupat. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 78-91.
Jessica, your points about Dickinson's vision are valid, especially about the acts of destruction of nature. This could be a paper topic, too, if you were interested in pursuing it.
ReplyDeleteThough I get the same kind of eerie and shadowy impressions from her poems as well, I think that confining Dickinson's work to simply involving death is limiting what you could be seeing if you took a deeper look. She is great at expressing what is possible but not quite realized. Put yourself in one of her observer's standpoints where she describes imaginable and unimaginable escapes from the confines of limitation and society. I was reading a little excerpt about her and it stated that Dickinson "saw poetry as a double-edged sword." Try to look at it like that and see what you notice.
ReplyDelete-Stevie