Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
Dickinson's Poems
Only a few of Dickinson's poems were published during her lifetime. For an editor preparing her poems for publication, determining the text of many poems presents problems.
• Some poems are unfinished; a few even seem to be rough drafts.
• More than one version exists of a number of poems. Because she did not publish these poems, she did not have to make a final decision about which word, line, or stanza she preferred. Also, she included poems in her letters, changing them to fit her correspondent or the subject of the letter.
• In her letters, she sometimes writes poems as prose and prose as poetry, so that it is hard to distinguish them.
Her occasionally idiosyncratic spelling, punctuation, and word choice can be distracting to readers, so that editors have to decide whether to change her text to conform to modern usage.
Dickinson's Style
Her seeking the crux of experience affected her style. As part of her seeking essence or the heart of things, she distilled or eliminated inessential language and punctuation from her poems. She leaves out helping verbs and connecting words; she drops endings from verbs and nouns. It is not always clear what her pronouns refer to; sometimes a pronoun refers to a word which does not appear in the poem. At her best, she achieves breathtaking effects by compressing language. Her disregard for the rules of grammar and sentence structure is one reason twentieth century critics found her so appealing; her use of language anticipates the way modern poets use language. The downside of her language is that the compression may be so drastic that the poem is incomprehensible; it becomes a riddle or an intellectual puzzle. Dickinson said in a letter, "All men say 'what' to me"; readers are still saying "What?" in response to some of her poems.
Her seclusion may have contributed to the obscurity of her poetry. One danger of living alone, in one's own consciousness, is that the individual may begin to create private meanings for words and private symbols, which others do not have the key to. So language, instead of communicating, baffles the reader. Dickinson does fall into this trap occasionally.
Dickinson was enamored of language; she enjoyed words for their own sake, as words. One of her amusements was to read Webster's Dictionary (1844) and to savor words and their definitions. This interest gives a number of her poems their form--they are really definitions of words, for example "Pain has an element of blank," "Renunciation is a piercing virtue," or "Hope is the thing with feathers." Sometimes consulting the 1844 dictionary clarifies a line, for a meaning appearing in her dictionary may no longer be used.
Her linguistic mastery and sense of the dramatic combine in the often striking first lines of her poems, such as "Just lost when I was saved!," "I like a look of Agony," and "I can wade grief." Look at the first lines of the poems in your textbook for other examples.
Dickinson consistently uses the meters of English hymns. This is undoubtedly one reason why modern composers like Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland have set her poems to music and why the dancer Martha Graham choreographed them as a ballet.
Knowing other stylistic characteristics may help you read her poetry: She uses the dash to emphasize, to indicate a missing word or words, or to replace a comma or period. She changes the function or part of speech of a word; adjectives and verbs may be used as nouns; for example, in "We talk in careless--and in loss," careless is an adjective used as a noun. She frequently uses be instead of is or are. She tends to capitalize nouns, for no apparent reason other than that they are nouns.
To casual readers of poetry, it may seem that Dickinson uses rhyme infrequently. They are thinking of exact rhyme (for example, see, tree). She does use rhyme, but she uses forms of rhyme that were not generally accepted till late in the nineteenth century and are used by modern poets. Dickinson experimented with rhyme, and her poetry shows what subtle effects can be achieved with these rhymes. Dickinson uses identical rhyme (sane, insane) sparingly. She also uses eye rhyme (though, through), vowel rhymes (see, buy), imperfect rhymes (time, thin), and suspended rhyme (thing, along).
A reassurance: I don't expect you to memorize these categories or to write about them; I would just like you to be aware of the variety of rhymes and of Dickinson's poetic practices.
Themes
Though Dickinson's insights are profound, they are limited in topic. Northrup Frye points out, "It would be hard to name another poet in the history of the English language with so little interest in social or political events." She lived through the Civil War, yet her poems contain no clear references to that national trauma. Richard Howard comments wryly, "... there was only one event, herself."
The idea of identity or, alternately, the failure of identity runs through her poetry. One form it takes is the achievement of status or the lack of status; repeatedly she uses terms like "queen," "royal," "imperial," and "lowly." Status can be achieved through crucial experiences, like love, marriage, death, poetic expression. She insisted on the need and the right of the individual to maintain integrity; one way of doing this was to exercise inflexible principle in selecting or making choices.
In identifying themes, I briefly discuss one theme at a time and list poems which illustrate that theme. This approach may give the false impression that these themes are separate. In fact, two or more of these themes may occur in the same poem, and several themes are clearly connected, like pain and death.
In her poems, Dickinson adopts a variety of personas, including a little girl, a queen, a bride, a bridegroom, a wife, a dying woman, a nun, a boy, and a bee. Though nearly 150 of her poems begin with "I," the speaker is probably fictional, and the poem should not automatically be read as autobiography. Dickinson insisted on the distinction between her poetry and her life: "When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse, it does not mean--me--but a supposed person."
Poem Analysis
"Why do I love" You, Sir?
"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because—
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer—Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.
Because He knows—and
Do not You—
And We know not—
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so—
The Lightning—never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
Because He knows it cannot speak—
And reasons not contained—
—Of Talk—
There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—
The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
Because He's Sunrise—and I see—
Therefore—Then—
I love Thee—
Emily Dickinson
“Why Do I Love” You, Sir? is a fine example of Dickinson at her most unconventional and, arguably, brilliant. As is typical of Dickinson’s work, the poem consists of very short lines and contains unconventional punctuation and capitalization, which was contrary to the poetic ‘rules’ of the era.
The First Stanza of “Why Do I Love” You, Sir?
The poem opens with the oddly punctuated, “Why do I love” You, Sir? The poet’s narrator seems to be repeating a question that has been asked of her, hence the quotation marks around “Why do I love”. In the next verse, she responds with the almost childlike, “Because—” The sentence is never completed, giving the suggestion that, “because” is an answer in of itself.
However, she does go on to explain her simplistic response. “The Wind does not require the Grass/To answer—Wherefore when He pass/She cannot keep Her place.” Here she likens herself to blades of grass that are shaken by the wind. The wind doesn’t ask why the grass is thus affected and, if he did, the answer would probably be “because.”
The Second Stanza of “Why Do I Love” You, Sir?
She goes on to tell the unnamed ‘You’ that perhaps we can’t know everything, specifically the strange ways in which love moves. However, she claims that she and the object of her love knows “Enough for Us”. Reinforcing this very simplistic notion that some things, like love, are what they are and to question them is senseless.
The Third Stanza of “Why Do I Love” You, Sir?
Dickinson then reverts to the theme of nature to further emphasise her point. She remarks that the lightening doesn’t question why it’s sudden flash of brightness causes an eye to close, “Because He knows it cannot speak—”. However, she implies that even if an eye could speak to the lightening, it would do neither any good, as “…reasons not contained—/—Of Talk—” In other words, logic or reason simply can’t be applied to all things, especially those of nature (love being one of them).
The Fourth Stanza of “Why Do I Love” You, Sir?
In the poem’s final stanza, the narrator has one last analogy to make. She tells her love, “The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—/Because He's Sunrise” Again, with childlike simplicity, she states that the sunrise rouses her in the morning, exactly because it is the sunrise. With further explanation redundant, she finishes with a statement of fact, “Therefore—Then—/I love thee—”
Emily Dickinson’s “Why Do I Love” You, Sir? Is the narrator’s attempt to dismiss the application of reason and logic to matters of the heart. She insists that things in nature, like wind, lightening and a sunrise are, because they just are. Her love for her the unnamed ‘You’ is equally inexplicable or, depending upon how the reader views the poem, it is incredibly easy to explain - she loves, “because.”
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