Comments on Dickinson's style

After reading several of Emily Dickinson’s poems from the class packet, I found myself trying to identify this poet with certain aspects of her poetry. I finally concluded a couple of points that I felt clearly characterized her sense of style as a poet.

Up until now, I have not been really exposed to Dickinson’s poetry, but I am glad that I have and that we are going in depth through analyzing and reading. A couple things I noticed included the overall structure of her poems, the recurring themes of many of the poems, and the excessive use of abstract ideas as concrete forms.

Dickinson’s style is very distinctive. In some ways, I feel as if given an untitled, unnamed Dickinson poem I could tell that it was written by her, but I’m not sure, we will see. Her poems are rather short, some just a couple of lines, others are a bit lengthier. The lines, we will see in her style of poetry is short and I would say a bit choppy. The complete thoughts are broken up by hyphens that sort of act as commas in many ways. The hyphens are almost always present in Dickinson’s poems and serve as an indication of a brief, but important pause.

The subjects of many of Dickinson’s poem revolve around death. At least the main themes presented in the poems are based on death whether it is occurring presently in the poem or about after death. In some of Dickinson’s poems, the idea is presented as beyond death and in those cases, it is likely to find a glimpse of Dickinson’s humor. “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died-,” exemplifies this trace of poetic humor. The entire poem is themed around death and suddenly, at random, a “Fly” is described which is seems at first glance, diverting from the original subject. However, Dickinson also has a way with metaphorically presenting those themes and ideas too. Therefore, the fly definitely serves as a significant symbol in her poem. At times, it is difficult to tell what it is that she is truly saying because her poetry is so abstract.

Speaking of abstraction, the ideas represented in Dickinson’s poems are abstract ideas. She tends to describe things such as stillness, misery, death, and immortality. Those things seem to not connote an image. However, Emily Dickinson is able to form such images by referring to death sometimes as even “He.” Her point-of-view is very nonconformist, but the poems she writes are examples of mastering literature that manipulating the rules is very artistic. She does just enough of this to create outstanding poems of profound meaning.