Sublime verses of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s poetry is fascinating. Her poetic vision and the imagery her poems create have fascinated me ever since I came across them in a small tattered book of poems I bought on the pavements near flora fountain in Bombay some 30 years ago. Emily’s poems stood out from the collection and thanks to Amazon and Kindle, the entire collection of the 1800+ poems of hers is now available for free download. Hail the INTERNET!

The lines in the tag line of my blog http://words-are-weariness.blogspot.in are excerpted from one of her celebrated poems, ‘Tell all the truth---tell it slant‘.

I do not have a list of favorites of hers, as during different times and in different personal contexts, different poems have appealed to me. However, what has given me sublime pleasure is the suddenness of expressions and the subtle movement that it makes deep down. How could so few words make so large an impact?

Though the import of her poetry is universal and timeless, it helps to understand the life and times of Emily to appreciate her verses better.

This poem titled “Exclusion” says a lot about Emily, who lived a life of a recluse.

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door;

On her divine majority   

Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariots pausing

At her low gate;

Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling

Upon he mat.

I’hv known her from an ample nation

Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention

Like stone.

Here the author confirms  her mental state of locking herself up with her poetic vision and work , which she did in total secrecy, never attempting to get them published. She remained true to her intent of keeping closed the valves of her attention, like stone, till the very end. Just 10 of her poems had seen print with indifferent reviews during her life time. After her death, her poems were found in a note book hidden under her bed, a good 1800 of them. No chariots ( wealth and fame ) or emperors ( adulating men of influence and power) could move her. I know of women with such steely resolve, mostly driven to it by circumstances brought upon them by unworthy suitors. However, Emily is not known to have had a beau nor did he marry till she died of Brights Disease, a chronic kidney ailment.

She mostly wrote about life, death, love and nature. She preferred anonymity when the men in her family were lawyers and politicians and men of public life. There is another poem which is almost an indictment of those who seek publicity;

                                                                   

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there 's a pair of us—don't tell!

They 'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

Here she is satirical of those who keep advertising themselves like a frog in a marsh or a swamp ( bog .. remember bogged down .. to be stuck in a swamp)

'Admiring bog' – here she compares the aam public to the lowly swamp and enjoins the reader, if he/she were to agree with her, to keep the contempt a secret. A clear Us-verses-Them sentiment!

There is another gem where you can see clearly her contempt for conformity--

Much Madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense the starkest madness.

'T is the majority

In this, as all, prevails

Assent, and you are sane;

Demur, --- you're straightaway

dangerous,

And handled with a chain.

Emily's contempt for the formal rules of engagement with society is stark here. She implores society for holding as 'sense' what is actually 'madness', while what is held as 'madness' is actually the divinest sense. However, as the rule of the dumb majority prevails, it is better to go along with it as otherwise it is retribution that awaits those differ.

This poem shows the rebel that she was in her days ( 1850 to 1880). She is said to have questioned the existence of Jesus. Now the social mores are different from her days, however being a non-conformist is risky in any society.