Ysidoro
194
The author is talking in first person.
- Title divine is mine.
The marriage is sacred accordingly with the gospel of Christ.
- The Wife without the Sign- / Acute Degree conferred on me - / Empress of Cavalry – Royal, all but the Crown -
She represents an empress without crown. Cavalry represents the husbandry institution..
- Betrothed, without the Swoon
Marriage indeed is not an award.
- God gives us Women/ When You hold Garnet to Garnet/ Gold to Gold/ Born – Bridalled – Shrouded/ In a Day/ Tri Victory.
Women cannot escape three elements of their destiny: born, marriage, and death; and support the men in their struggles for battles, and glory. Then women become like the queen of the arms: infantry; the soldiers (women) of the front. Regardless of men winning or losing battles women take the worst part of it.
- “My husband” Women say/ Stroking the Melody/ Is this the way.
Women are more intrinsically tied to men than men to women (during the XIX century this was common). Women should ask themselves: is it the marriage worthy?
Conclusion.
Marriage should be abolished as it is; women need more freedom in order to decide by themselves. Dickinson represents the advocate of women of her time.
225
Being a wife represents a terrible situation that is safer for women to be death than alive, even though they are the Czar of the house, their submissive destiny is insurmountable. We go back again to the first poem and found the same reason: the situation of women in the XIX century, they lack educational opportunities, and mostly stayed at home taking care of the children.
269
This is a courtly love poem. The courtly love appears around XII – XIII century in Europe. One of the first stories is “Tristan and Isolde,” (composed ca.1210) which it is represented later by the Richard Wagner opera of the same name. Courtly love represents the love in poems, all the scenes and action in love just in words, the lovers maybe never even get into sexual relation but vivid words.
This poem represents metaphorically the intensity of the sexual encounter. The intensity of love cannot b changed for any natural element, e.g. the winds. The compass and the chart represent the male and female genital organs. The compass penetrates the chart. Im thee means during the intercourse they are both like one.
Besides the sultry meaning of this poem, the author is exposing the woman as simple object of sexual desire. In another words women are cursed by love.
407
William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1903) was a famous English poet wrote “Invictus,” the last two lines of this poem: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” Means we built our own destiny or we create our own havoc.
Poem 407 represents our own destiny, we create our own destruction. We create the material world, and we built the hate that conducts us to our self-destruction.
591
It is a funeral reported by the deceased. All the steps of a funeral are represented in this poem. The fly is the symbol of the death. The stillness in the room happens when mourners remain silent before the body is taken away in a coffin. The had wrung dry of much crying, no more crying; the coffin is taken away. The deceased want her body to be taken away. There interposed a fly with blue uncertain stumbling buzz, means the death is coming for hi/her flesh. The windows failed, and then I could not see to see,” means the coffin is closed and his/her existence is gone. The spirit cannot see the material world.
764
In the last stanza is the whole meaning of this religious poem where death is the speaker and God is the Master. The death is controlled by the wish of God. The death has the power to kill but no power to die. It is God who controls death. From the previous stanzas we can see death is brutal, bloody.
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In general, Emily Dickinson's poetry is unique in its style. Her use of dashes and her specific capitalization both inform the poem. The dashes create almost a conversational tone, set in juxtaposition to her clear and complex diction. What seems to be random capitalization works to entice the reader to re-read each word for deeper meaning; why does she choose this word at this moment?
ReplyDeleteDickinson employs these tools in her poem, #407. The poem is a reflection of the self. Dickinson explores the recesses of the mind and the fear of loneliness within oneself. It is worse than external loneliness. External fears are nothing compared to the intricacies of the brain and all the horrors it can produce. Perhaps reflection itself is frightening for Dickinson.
-Irma Suarez
I thought Emily Dickinson’s poems were incredibly difficult to slog through. I challenge anyone to decipher them. I had to do research on the internet to get some idea of what they were about. If I were an author and wanted to get my message across, why would I write something that was so difficult to understand? That would be like painting a lovely picture, then hanging in it a dark room so no one could see it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the poem I want to address is 194. As far as I can figure out, it is about equality of women. “Wife without the Sign” could mean that women don’t receive recognition. “Empress of Calvary” could be comparing a woman to the perfect woman, the Blessed Mother. “Born, Bridalled, Shrouded” could mean that women are born, marry and die, not accomplishing much in between. “My husband-women say” could mean that they believe their only power is through their husbands. The end, “is this the way” could mean that women are questioning everything. In other words, is this all there is? It would make sense since Ysidoro says that Dickinson was an advocate for women.
I don’t know a lot about poetry, but I wonder: does the author want the reader to get a certain message, or is it just about getting whatever you can out of it? In other words, it means whatever you think it means. I’ve heard that about art. Does anyone have thoughts about this?
Mindy Pigue
Reading and trying to interpret Dickinson's poems may not be easy and one might have to guess many times what exactly is the message that Dickinson is trying to relate to us. Her poems are "short and sweet" and to the point. In only a few lines Dickinson gives us her thoughts, opinion and deep meaning of what she wants the reader to think about. Those few lines are intensive and enough to give the message across, whatever that may be.
ReplyDeletePoems #194 and #225 seem to be about the inequalities of women that existed at the time, but Dickinson makes a strong stand when she writes "I'm Wife"! Stop There! It seems to say that that is all that women did then is be a wife. Her feelings are truly being expressed openly and she's not afraid of being so open. This certainly makes me want to stand up and clap my hands for her.
Poem #591, however, is a strange poem about death with a very odd beginning. (I heard a Fly buzz-when I died. It possibly contains all the thoughts one thinks about right before death. The "King" could possibly be representing being ready to meet God. Of course, her will with the Keepsakes are signed away, which is the natural legal matter that gets done naturally, but reading about it seems depressing when written in this poem. The fly seems to have some sort of great symbolic effect. Could Dickinson be trying to say that our life is not worth more than a small fly when we reach that end of life stage? Doesn't our belongings that we leave others upon death take great importance over such an emotional aspect of life such as death?
Again, there is so much meaning in just a few lines of Dickinson's poems as opposed to Emerson's "Song of Myself". I wish it was a novel or short story. Such a lengthy poem loses the effect and one gets lost after a while.
Eva Rosengarten
The 591 poem is one of my favorite Dickinson poems. It is short but it is packed with details and leaves you wondering. Why did this fly “interpose”? Why did the speaker say “and the windows failed, and then/ I could not see? The fly is the most intriguing figure of the poem as the speaker emphasizes its buzzing, its interposing and just the fact that this fly makes its presence among death.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting and precise comments on the Dickinson poems. You point out a common theme of oppression in poems 194 225 and 269. Women have been constantly oppressed for a lifetime. Men were the dominant providers while women were traditionally expected to be submissive and loyal. Until recently, a relationship between men and woman would be extremely unfair because men were given complete power. Whenever there is an imbalance of power, there is always abuse of power. The term “might is right” is a term that comes to mind which also has brutal connotations. Men believed they could physically abuse their wives because they were the stronger of the two. Men executed there authority to the extreme often beating their wives for any action they found unpleasing. Women were also expected to be subservient to men at all times. They are “objects of sexual desire” and are “cursed by love” as you point out in poem 269.
Rex De Asis
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ReplyDeleteI did some Emily Dickinson before and the thing I remember the most is her use of compressed meanings. Unlike Walt Whitman who seems to use every single word in the dictionary in “Song of Myself,” she seems to compress meaning into one word. She also talks about the bizarre things in nature as evident in #591 (I heard a Fly buzz). In this poem the speaker claims that our thoughts become focused on pointless details at the most crucial times; on a deathbed in this poem. Here the speaker seems to be questioning human nature. The speaker seems to be saying that we should not believe that we are holy or any better than each other because in the end to a fly we are just a piece of meat. #269 (Wild nights…) seems to be a love poem. It is sexually charged (the mention of the “Compass” and the “Chart”) even though we know for a fact that Dickinson lived a life of solitude and never really married but may have had a few relationships. #407 (One need not be Chamber…) is actually the one I like best. Here the speaker seems to be saying that it is better to meet a real ghost than “to be Haunted” having to confront your fears, past or hidden secrets. The speaker compares the material world with the inner workings of the mind. She seems to be saying that our “interior” (minds) harbor darker secrets than what can be found in the “external” (material) world. The speaker implies that at least in the material world we are surrounded by people who can help but internally we have to cope with our fears alone.
ReplyDelete-Vedi Ramdhanie
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ReplyDeleteI always heard how great Emily Dickinson was. as a woman i do appreciate her work and all that she stood for. As a reader of her poems it was difficult for me to follow, im not much of a poem reader since i can barely uderstand THEM.. Putting that aside thanks to the blog leader i was able to understand a lot more what she was trying to communicate. at first i thought she was making the aguement that a woman's place is by her husband. One thing that i did notice was the darkness in poem 591 about the funeral. Not knowing right away what the poem was about i did feel the difference between this poem and the others i've read.
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ReplyDeleteAfter reading Emily Dickinson's poems: 194, 225, 269, 407, 591, and 764, I actually saw a new side to the poet. I thought I was familiar with her poems and knew the basic themes of her works, but I was proven wrong. Emily Dickinson is not ALL about death, depression, and solitude. There is actually an underlying theme in many of her poems.
ReplyDeleteThis might not be new news to anyone else, but, it was for me. I think that Emily Dickinson's works have a feminist cry to them. In a sense, I feel that she wrote about the role of women and their oppression in a patriach society. The speaker in her poems express themselves as oppressed wives. It is no wonder that many of her poems are fascinated by death!
In general I find that short concise poems are the hardest to decioher, Dickens being no exception. When reading it is very difficult to pinpoint what exactly it is that she is speaking of. When reading through her poems, i did not really get any clear messages. After reading over the blog responce I did relise that alot of what she wrote of did alude to marriage. The way in which she touched upon marriage was sertanly not positive. She saw it is a punishment as something she is tied to, she describes in very negatively. Perhaps being a women of this time period she had no other choice but to marry. She was unhappy with this forced union, the only in which she had to express this distress was through her poetry. this could eb the reason they are so concise and hard to decipher, perhaps she wanted her feelings put across without them necesarily being understood.
ReplyDeleteAs most everyone here, I too had almost no idea what was going on in these selections of Dickinson's poetry -- but Ysidoro has very interesting explications of them.
ReplyDeleteSome other thoughts: Very involved imagery. Dickinson was definitely writing toward a specific, thoughtful, analytical audience, one that would take the time and effort to decipher every aspect of the imagery, diction, and syntax.
The latter, especially, is quite revolutionary. Both the enjambment and the dashes which occur throughout, break up the flow of the text and significantly impair the reading. These are telling the reader (or, more appropriately, the "student") to stop -- think -- gather in the momentousness and the multifold implications of the idea enveloped in that one word, one clause. For example, "Born - Bridalled - Shrouded - / In a Day - /" (194): each one of these possesses its own shade of meaning, its own force -- (as per Ysidoro) perhaps the three phases of being through which most women were (are?) expected to pass. (A separate point of inquiry is the coupling of enjambment and dashes; why does almost every line end in both, and why did she not enjamb at the end of the line -- accomplishing her intended break -- and dash in the middle -- also accomplishing an obstruction? Why do these too accomplish that one could not have?)
Another distinctive Dickinsonian mark is the serial capitalization; Whitman, in contrast, has very few of these, though surely he intends the same degree of significance.... A possible answer is that perhaps Whitman intends more of a flow of language -- he wants the student to fall into the poetry, to fold the poetry (and the poet, together) into one's psyche and emerge a new being. Dickinson, on the other hand, seems more of an advocate, or a presenter of familiar concepts in a new light; she is not trying to change our essences, but rather our perspective on certain existing, prevalent institutions, so she wants us to pause in our reading, to think over the idea, and be changed by the analysis and new perspective.
As mentioned, Dickinson constructed her poetry in an innovative manner. Her syntax and diction were manipulated in a way which sets her work apart from other poets of her time. Many will say her poetry is formal, especially when comparing her work with Whitman, but the truth is her style took the accepted methods of closed form, and twisted them in a liberal way, which makes it somewhat of a free form in essence. While Whitman’s work flowed fluidly with America, and the changes America was about to undergo, Dickinson’s work revolved around less political schemes, and her poems appeared to be less fluid. Dickinson appeared to be tormented by the pressures society can put on the individual, especially a female. It was as if she felt limited, but only free when lost in her poetry. On the other hand, Whitman’s work called for revolution, and had an expulsion of energy in its lines, which cried out for change.
ReplyDelete764
ReplyDeleteIn the last stanza is the whole meaning of this religious poem where death is the speaker and God is the Master. The death is controlled by the wish of God. The death has the power to kill but no power to die. It is God who controls death. From the previous stanzas we can see death is brutal, bloody
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I don't know if Death is speaking here; the last stanza would seem so, if you follow the lines "for i have but the power to kill / without - the power to die." however, i cannot reconcile that with the previous stanzas. the "Owner" is the Creator, but why would the Owner carry away Death? (line 4)
if this is taken literally, and the speaker is in fact, a loaded gun explicating its life, this makes a bit more sense.
so if we take the stanzas step by step, we get the following scenario.
Stanza 1.
the gun is stored in a corner, unused, until one day the Owner (hubter) comes to use it.
Stanza 2.
they roam the "sovereign" woods. the hunter can be seen as a king in the woods, and the gun is used to hunt doe. and the gun "speaks", that is to say, the hunter shoots it, and the mountains reply by way of echoes.
Stanza 3.
the smile and the light can be the spark from the gun shot?
Stanza 4.
At night, the hunter places his gun near his head when he sleeps; in case he is attacked, the gun is ready to protect him.
Stanza 5.
The gun is used as protection, and therefore any enemy of teh hunter's will be attacked by the gun.
"none stir a second time..." one shot is enough to kill.
Stanza 6.
the gun can live longer than the hunter, because there is a chance that the hunter may be killed. however, the hunter MUST live longer than the gun, because again, the gun shot can kill, but only through the hunter's skill in shooting can an enemy die.
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