Post 19 - Emily Dickinson

I've really enjoyed reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She was obviously a very talented poet. She has so many quotable, meme-worthy, lines in her poems too. I've never really gotten into reading poetry before this class. Now, so many of the poems we've read have really made me appreciate the art and beauty of some poetry.

I always admired authors that can paint a picture with their words. The format of poetry allows for fewer words than a full short story or book. It's amazing that authors like Emily Dickinson are able to paint such a beautiful scene full of metaphors and symbols, and they do it with the use of so few words. I'm in awe of such carefully constructed writing. The more I read, the greater my new found love of poetry.
I also love that each poem, because of the poets meager use of words, can speak different things to different people. I'm finding that when I read a poem, and we have to interpret the meaning for class, my take on the poem, what it said to me, is very different from what others say the poem is supposed to be about.

The poem, "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain," spoke to me of that feeling I sometimes get in my head, when a thought or a problem goes round and round, and I can't figure it out. There are times when I feel like I'm going to go crazy with it. It does feel almost like a drum, beating a rhythm that is telling me that I have the thought or answer, but I just can't quite get to it. At the end of the poem Dickinson writes,

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down–
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing–then–"

 

That perfectly describes the feeling of finally reaching the thought that I knew was in my head all along. When I looked up online what this poem was supposed to be about, this is not the interpretation that I saw most people have. The general consensus is that it's about the obvious, funerals, or that it may be describing a person falling into madness. When I went back and reread the poem, I could see the other interpretation's point-of-view. I don't know if maybe I'm just not "getting it," so I see something that others don't, or if maybe I just have a different perspective than most people have. I don't know, and really I don't care. The point of reading poetry is to enjoy it and I'm doing that. If I get something completely different out of it than the author intended, that doesn't make me admire the beauty of the author's words any less.
I really like the poem, ""Faith" is a Fine Invention" it spoke of the clash between science and religion long before most. Her foresight was amazing. And that a poem with only 16 words, can say so much. She sometimes wrote of being surrounded by those with faith, when she couldn't do so herself.

Emily Dickinson was a complex person, as her writing shows. I am a new admirer of her work. I actually just asked for a book of her poetry for my birthday next week. I can't wait to read more of her writing! I also look forward to going back and reading some of the poems that we've read in class, when I'm in a different place in life, and seeing if I read something different in them at that point.