The recurring theme of death throughout the poems that Emily Dickinson wrote is astonishing to think about. Given the time period that she lived in (with high mortality rates) and the fact that she had so many people that she loved and cared for to die, I am able to see why it was an important part of her life. Even when she writes her poetry about the civil war, she fixates herself on the violent and deadly aspects of the war (how can you blame her).
The imagery that she uses in her poems makes you picture things in a totally different way. In “Safe in their alabaster chambers” she writes in the third stanza, “Grand go the years in the crescent above them.” I can just picture time passing by slowly as day turns to night and night to day. It is horrible to think about. In “The Battlefield” poem she says “They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars, like petals from a rose.” You can just see men dying left and right just as quickly as a flower loses its petals. You think about this and realized that this happened in this country and she had first hand accounts living during this time. It is heartbreaking to think about, but intriguing to see it from her eyes.
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There is definitely some death in Dickinson's poetry, I agree with that. However, I find that the death is much more in the imagery than in the themes. In her poems, something doesn't always die and it isn't always connected to the war. I understand how it may seem that way but most of her poems are, to me, less story lined and more random with definite death imagery. It is a very interesting thing and repetitive occurrence to point out though.
ReplyDeleteI find myself wanting to know the definite order of Dickinson's poems all the time, somewhat because of this recurring death imagery. I wonder which poems came before which other ones. I know that we have a guess, but I feel like knowing the certain order will give us a much better idea of why she uses such imagery given the time periods of her life. I also wonder if her sister ever freaked out about the morbid thoughts coming out of her sister's soul. I mean, isn't that kind of scary and/or something to worry about?