Reflective Exploration of American Poetry - Essay Example

?Died for Beauty Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886), one of the passionate poets of American literature, has written beautiful poems that deal with her passionate life and themes related to it, including love, beauty, death, sickness and inspiration. Most of the poems written by this prolific private poet reflected upon the personal experiences of her life and she considered poetry as a means to alleviate her personal agonies and as a way of releasing or escaping from pain. Thus, a careful reader can easily find traces, in her poems, of the physical isolation, loneliness, and eccentricities which she experienced in her personal life and these poems contain hints to her unfulfilled dreams. By and large, Dickinson’s poems are subjective in nature, short and unconventional in quality, and they were mainly for private circulation rather than large-scale publishing. The unique quality of her poems such as short lines, lack of titles, unconventional capitalization and punctuation, use of slant rhyme, etc have attracted readers of the subsequent generation, although Dickinson was almost unknown as poet during her lifetime. Dickinson’s poems mainly deal with her mysterious life which is presented to the readers through her mysterious verse. Through the various themes in her poems, Dickinson presented the startling aspects ordinary human life which includes the mysterious actuality of death. It is also greatly remarkable that she dealt with two recurring themes, i.e. death and immortality, in her poems (as well as her personal letters) and the poems discussed in this essay focus on such themes as death and immortality, love, beauty, sickness and inspiration. This paper makes a reflective exploration of some of the renowned poems by Dickinson in order to make a comparison of the major themes, and the use of denotation/connotation, versification, figures of speech, etc. “I Died for Beauty, But Was Scarce” is one of the celebrated poems by Dickinson in which the poet deals with the theme of beauty and death, and she makes a significant association between beauty and truth. The poet’s obsession with beauty is clearly revealed through the lines in the poem as the poet maintains: “I died for beauty…” Significantly, the denotative meaning of ‘for’ in the first line is “in the cause of”, “to achieve”, or “to have as a goal”. However, a careful reader can find a connotation to the poet’s failure in achieving the real meaning of beauty which is hinted by the words ‘died’ and ‘scarce’ in the opening line. It is important to recognize that the major concern of the poet in this poem is to bring out the link between beauty and truth which she achieves through the effective use of diction – for example, words like ‘adjoining room’, ‘kinsmen’, ‘brethren’, etc reveal this link. To analyze the use of versification in the poem, it is clear that the poet uses rhyming words such as “tomb – room”, “replied – said”, “rooms – names”, etc to illustrate the musical qualities of her poems. Similarly, one can find the use of figures of speech such as metaphor, personification, metonymy, etc. The use of metaphor in “We brethren are” compares the two unlike things – i.e. beauty and truth, whereas these concepts are personified in the poem when they are given human qualities. The poet is effective in the use of metonymy when she refers to ‘our lips’ and ‘our names’. In short, “I Died for Beauty, But Was Scarce” is a typical poem by Emily Dickinson in which a reader can find elements of her poetry such as common themes, lyric qualities, unconventional capitalization and punctuation, striking use of figures of speech, and connotative language. Another poem dealing with the theme of death is “Because I could not stop for Death” in which Dickinson personifies death as a gentleman caller or suitor, and the poem incorporates all the major characteristics of Dickinson-poetry. In this poem, the poet celebrates the theme of death and establishes how dearly she valued this concept. Whereas death is the overriding theme of the poem, it is not presented as a concept to be afraid of, but as a kind, polite suitor, who “knew no haste”. The symbolic use of language all through this poem helps the poet in presenting her themes effectively to the readers and her journey with the kind and polite suitor is a symbolic one, representing the progress of her life from childhood (We passed the school…), through maturity (“the fields of gazing grain”), ultimately to her grave (“the setting sun”). Significantly, the poem abounds in images, symbols, connotation, and the use of figurative language. This poem also typifies the normal Emily Dickinson-poetry with elements such as common themes, lyric quality, unconventional capitalization and punctuation, striking use of figures of speech, use of images, symbols, and connotative language. The striking similarity in the themes, versification, and figures of language in the poetry of Emily Dickinson becomes lucid to the reader in a reflective reading of the poem “After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes”, in which the poet talks about pain, death (‘formal feeling’), etc. Dickinson’s reflection on human psychology and responses attract the reader easily because she effectively represents the feeling of pain, suffering, and death through the persuasive use of symbols, images, diction, and figures of speech. Example of her effective use of words and phrases include ‘great pain’, ‘formal feeling’, ‘ceremonious’, ‘stiff Heart’, ‘mechanical’, ‘wooden way’, ‘freezing persons’, etc. The images and symbols used in the poem are so effective that they talk on behalf of the poet directly to the readers. The symbolic use of language can be traced in the words such as ‘great pain’, ‘formal feeling’, ‘stiff Heart’, ‘wooden way’, ‘freezing persons’, ‘stone ‘, ‘snow’, etc. In this poem, too, the readers identify the common themes of Dickinson-poetry, lyric quality, unconventional capitalization and punctuation, striking use of figures of speech, use of images, symbols, and connotative language, etc. A comparative analysis of the major poems by Emily Dickinson, such as those discussed in this paper, confirms that Dickinson is a poet who dealt with the startling aspects of ordinary life which are represented through the various themes in her poems. Themes such as death and immortality, love, beauty, sickness, and inspiration are common to the poems of Dickinson and she celebrates these themes in the most splendid ways. In order to comprehend the general themes of Dickinson’s poetry, it is essential to have a clear idea about the cultural and autobiographical context of the poet, because most of her poems are personal notes on her life and experiences. Apart from the common themes, the major poems by Dickinson also shares other elements such as lyric quality, unconventional capitalization and punctuation, striking use of figures of speech, use of images, symbols, and connotative language, etc. Work Cited Dickinson, Emily. Poems. Roberts Brothers. 1891. Read More