When I first glanced over the poem, I was pleasantly surprised to see a Dickinson poem that I had not recognized. The structure and syntax of the poem itself, however, is undoubtedly the work of Dickinson. The unique capitalization and use of hyphens are characteristics of her poems, but there is one aspect that is new in this poem then the eight other Dickinson poems I knew: You.
Most of the poems I have read from Dickinson had a first- or third-person point of view. In "'Twas like a Maelstrom," the use of second-person made me wonder who is the speaker referring to? Who did Dickinson intend to write this poem to? Like most of her other poems, the central subject is death--mainly the coming of death. Could the person Dickinson was writing to be someone dying?
Then in the final two stanzas, she points out the death of "you" and concludes with the question, "To perish, or to live?" Could it just be a poem Dickinson wrote with no one in mind or is there really something significant of "you"?
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I definitely did not catch that the first time around. I agree that the meaning of "you" is ambiguous; the word does lend a significant personality to the poem, making it far more accessible and far less abstract, but the point of poetry is not to limit meaning -- the meaning is in the eye of the beholder, as with anything. Dickinson never published her own poems so while the question of her original meaning will never be resolved, I guess we will have to take heart that at least one of her poems has the potential for a personal touch.
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