Emily Dickinson: Discussion Response

It never ceases to amaze me how few of Emily Dickinson's poems were read during the author's lifetime and how she persevered in writing them for so long, staying true to her spare style of writing. Many years later, modernist writers would use many of Dickinson's hallmarks as a writer, such as her fragmented prose, her innovative use of grammar, and her elliptical meanings. I do not think it was Dickinson's subject choice that made her so controversial. Many of the topics of her poems revolve around everyday household observations, death, and romance. Rather it was the way she addressed those subjects that made her readers pause, and made the few people to whom she did show her work inclined to underestimate it.

This focus upon mundane details is seen in her poem which begins "I tie my Hat -- I crease my Shawl -- / Life's little duties do -- precisely -- / As the very least Were infinite -- to me -- " Dickinson radically asserted that duties traditionally confined to a women's sphere could be worthy of poetic significance. The actual words of the poem are very simple, but the use of line breaks, pauses, and dashes punctuates each action and makes the reader think about the importance of each thought. Haltingly, Dickinson contemplates how so much of life is designed to postpone our awareness of the inevitability of death. "To simulate -- is stinging work -- To cover what we are -- " The many dashes indicate the reluctance with which the poetic speaker realizes that "we do life's labor -- Though life's Reward -- be done -- " The poem even ends with a dash, suggesting both poetic uncertainty and the speaker's reluctance to be 'done.'

I do not see the same connections that you do with the Coleman poem "I wanna hear a poem" and Dickinson's work. Coleman's poem is angry and deliberately repetitive, calling for poetry that invokes social action, rather than the type of lyrical introspection embodied in Dickinson. "I wanna hear a poem about struggle/So that when I open my mouth, I can step outside myself." Dickinson's oblique use of punctuation and her deliberately convoluted syntax seem to suggest that the author wanted her poem to be read, versus Coleman's poem which was designed to be spoken aloud. They seem to have different objectives as verse.