Emily Dickinson poetry work

Emily Dickinson poetry work

Emily Dickinson is an ancient American literary poet who was less known during her days as a poet. However, her reputation as an influential poet came to suffice days after she had died. Her collection of poems tends to revolve around the myriad daily activities of human life; these are achieved through the variety of themes which she employed in her poems. The poems revolve around specific themes like death and pain. Moreover, from a close analysis of her poems, it seems like both the themes of death and anxiety tend to be closely tied as one theme though they have been brought up in different poems. She is a poet who lived an ordinary life, but her poems seem to be so powerful that years after her death they got so felt since they tend o paint a clear picture of, precisely, what the society undergoes. Each of her poems leaves the reader with the sense of figuring out every feeling that she brings out in the poems. Pain is one of the main themes which she has tried to explore in many of her works; she winds pain with death as she describes paint to be more of a certain thing.

After great pain, a formal feeling Coming is one of Dickinson’s poems which brings the idea of pain to the fore. Many poems that Dickinson wrote revolved around the theme of death and pain, which comes with it plus immortality (Poemhunter, pg. 1). The first line of this poem begins with reflective say, “After great pain. A formal feeling comes—” (Dickinson, After a great Pain, a formal feeling coming, line 1). She, first, emphasises the word pain by describing it as a great thing which ought not to be taken lightly, especially, by the individuals who have not felt the pinch of pain. She describes the act of losing a loved one to be a kind of pain which takes decades and several days before the bereaved individuals get to heal from such type of pain. She clearly says that death is not any pain that ought to be taken so lightly in any societal setting; she confirms that it is a different type of pain, which can end up driving the bereaved to some lunatic state. Death is one of her main themes which has left a significant impact on her thinking, having been sufficed in most of her poems (Deghamin, pg. 1). It is a type of pain which is so big that it can end up consuming the whole self of an individual. The second word, formal, which tend to have borne much meaning in her poem, tells of how there exist some occasions which can be considered legal by other third parties. However, the fact that funerals tend to be conducted in a more formal does not, necessarily imply that they are less painful. The bereaved family and other close friends of the dead bear too much pain to the extent that some of them end up committing suicide. Therefore, this brings to the fore how death is another way through which the society experiences pain.

The line which states that nerves ceremoniously sit like tombs tend to symbolise how death brings with it some triggered sensation of pain when it occurs. Without nerves in the body, it is so evident that an individual’s body cannot perform the essential functions which are required of it. Thus, bring clearly how death is a positive and powerful thing which would render the whole body to be so full of pain hence get functionless. Dickinson tries to bring out the fact that with death, the nerves of bereaved individuals also tend to be rendered functionless and useless under the sun. It is because she had dealt with many cases of death which had made her give its description of pain vividly, in many of her poems (Kyra, pg. 1). This a vivid description of the lack of sensation which pain could bring in the body when it hits an individual. The other lines, “The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before?” (Dickinson, After a great Pain, a formal feeling coming, line 3-4); is so connected with the previous line that they tend to shed light on the same idea of how the arrival of pain in the body would get so disturbing that it interferes with the overall body system. Besides, she brings up the idea of time; where she argues that it is so common for an individual to lose track of time at a time of pain (Farr, pg. 9). This tends to be so when she gives a description of a heart being so stiff; this denotes that the heart becomes so empty and cold to the extent that it could not operate or perform any function in the body. Since it is the heart which keeps the body alive, the fact that pain would make the heart to be so stiff and lifeless gives an implication that a person can get to be so dull as a result of the pain that hits when death comes to play a part in the individual’s life.

Dickinson brings out the vivid description of pain and all that causes it by describing it as some enemy which takes over the physical function of the body to get numb; from this, it is so evident that the intrusion of pain in individual’s wellbeing, either physical or emotional, can lead to other destructive results which can end up destroying the entire wellness of the person. In this poem, the poet tends to have employed the use of similes to describe some cases and instances of hypothermia; the metaphors connect to some experiences of great pain which makes the whole-body start losing all the feelings (Bouson, pg. 3). As she continues with her description of what anxiety can bring to a person, Emily Dickinson puts it clear in her poem, After a great pain, a formal feeling Coming, that pain is an enemy of the people it slowly works towards making the respective individuals hopeless; this would later cause the person who has been by pain to loose hope in life and sees death as the way of escaping pain. For instance, when a child loses his or her beloved parent, the child would be so much in pain that at times they would tend to resign in the journey of life; to the extent that the only way out of such pain would be either committing suicide or finding an alternative of doing away with the pain.

In “I like a look of Agony” Dickinson tend to be relating the pain to some truth; she describes how pain, as somehow, an emotion which cannot quickly get to be turned off, or rather get hidden. In the first line, “I like a look of Agony, /Because I know it’s true—” (Dickinson, I like a look of Agony, line 1) she tries to give a clear depiction of how pain is more of a true thing which eats people to the bones. In this line, she tends to be giving an insight into how she knows the look of agony to be a true thing which has proved to be so common that it eats almost everybody in the society. In this poem, the poet tries to relate the feeling of agony, which come to suffice after death. She says that it is an intense agony which is so real that even the best actors cannot manage to fake; because the pain with which it comes with tend to be so strong. There are symbols of some worst kind of suffering which the poet reveals in this poem; the fact that men tend to hide their agony when they are so much in pain is an indication that pain is much of an enemy that need not be shown to the public when it hits. Therefore, men never want to show how much pain hits them, no matter how hard it is; they would use all the strategies possible to hide it from getting noticed. However, the poem later opines that pain is so much required for the truth to get seen.

Death, according to Dickson’s portrayal, is so cruel a thing which is more of a personal enemy to any individual. It is an invader which attacks its victims, at any hour of the day or night, without mercy or even permission from the victims. In her poem, “A Clock stopped” she portrays how her subject tends to undergo much suffering in dying moments. She describes death in this poem to be a powerful enemy of the people who can launch an intentional attack on the victims when they are still too oblivious to realise, something which later generates pain in the souls of many. Death, after the deliberate attack on the victims, brings severe pain to the individuals. The first line of the poem’s first stanza, “A clock stopped—not the mantel’s…” (Dickinson, A Clock Stopped, line 1) The dead clock has been used as imagery of a heart which has stopped working. Dickinson has used the clock and the clock’s second hand to give a clear representation of the heart. This gives a perception that the moment the clock stops ticking, there is evidence that the heart of some victim somewhere has as well stopped beating. The imagery of death, which the poet employs in this poem tend to be so much repulsive that it gives some torture to the victim who gets destined to die in some few moments. The victim, before the final stop of the heartbeat, undergoes some degree of pain. Therefore, it brings the clear picture of how death takes away members of a society which later leads to some grief and pain on the individuals who are left behind.

“It was not death, for I stood up” is another poem where Dickinson uses a person who is already dead to bring up the truth about pain, which exist within both the dead and alive. This poem gives a strong suggestion which is more inclined towards refusing something. The persona, though already dead, seems to be in anguish and some pain. The third stanza of the poem gives an insight into how the thought of one’s death, even before they are dead, can lead to internal pain. The persona of the poem seems to be in a state of psychological distress and instability, which somehow its cause is not clear. She tends to be imagining herself in a coffin and how life can get harder for her if the image comes right one day. A reading of the fifth stanza sheds enough light on despair and pain which the person reflects on. The persona feels like she will eventually get isolated if death catches up with her; this feeling caused much pain in her that she always tends to be imagining herself as a dead person in a coffin, trying to get the real feeling death and isolation which it can bring to an individual’s life. The more the persona thinks of death, the more she finds herself to be more entangled in a psychological wreck which comes with it a painful experience in her mind. She later resorts to believing that hope does not exist.

Consequently, poet Emily Dickinson show enough awareness in how much she had learnt of pain as part of the human societal setting which leads to hopelessness, anger and even death; Moreover, though pain can cause death, the poet winds her poems in such a way that paints a clear picture of how death and suffering are interrelated since end can as well be the cause of pain in an individual. The poems which have been analysed in this work, are among the many of her poems which revolve around death as a theme, to bring pain to the fore through its causes and its effects.