t first, Emily Dickinson's poems were a little hard to follow. I felt like it was scattered pieces of thoughts, strung together.
After reading them several times, I liked them more and more. I still don't think I'll fully understand all that she put into the poem, but I can appreciate them for what I can understand. I especially like One Need Not Be a Chamber...
I feel like it was true what Nyssa pointed out in class that we quickly assign mental illness to poets when their material is dark or when their material is vague. I do believe Dickinson probably did have some depression issues...but I think that she was just completely vulnerable when she wrote...especially since most of her poems were written in letters for people and weren't necessarily intended for the world to see.
I like the third stanza when she talks about being afraid of confronting yourself alone. I think a lot of people have a fear of being completely and entirely alone, with nothing and no one around. But it's ironic because Dickinson chose this a solitude lifestyle for herself. Perhaps this lifestyle is what enable her to process and come up with this ideas in this poem. Maybe being alone showed her how it can be a scary thing to confront yourself, and maybe she was able to conquer that and become comfortably with herself so that she could write about it.
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The idea of Emily conquering the fear of utter solitude is very interesting. It also explains Emily's deep knowledge and confidence of speaking of solitude. Honestly, Emily's poetry gets to be a little humbling for me. Its nice not to hear love poems, butterflies, and lilies all the time; maybe refreshing is a better word than nice.
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree that people are not necessarily mentally ill for looking at life atypically; in fact i appreciate those who do. I don't know if I can go as far as calling Emily a martyr, yet she is indeed something very unique. The issue of vulnerability is certainly key, and I think its very easy to see Emily's high level of openness, emotion, and thought spill out of each line. This can even be seen from how much work she poured into each poem (with all the re-writes etc.)
While I do agree that we shouldn't just label someone reclusive or crazy just because they are different or do not follow the "norm", I do not find myself as readily willing to say that Dickinson wasn't depressed or suffering from an illness. Sure, we all deal with things like love and death and it's nice that we can all relate to her work in some way, but I believe the extent that Dickinson took those topics still suggests she was suffering from something. We don't talk about death when we're at lunch with our friends or hide morbid metaphors in our facebook status'. Emotions like depression, fear, and love are all-encompassing, and a poet who suffers from depression will show it in their work.
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