Emily Dickinson – Page 10 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘I’ll tell you how the Sun rose’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Many of Emily Dickinson’s greatest poems begin as if responding to an unheard question or request. ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ is one such poem, and ‘I’ll tell you how the Sun rose’ is another. In this post, we offer some notes towards an analysis of this captivating poem.

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
A Ribbon at a time –
The Steeples swam in Amethyst –
The news, like Squirrels, ran –
The Hills untied their Bonnets –
The Bobolinks – begun –
Then I said softly to myself –
‘That must have been the Sun!’

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’ is the 986^th poem in Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. It’s among her most famous and often-anthologised poems, so a few words of analysis may help us to get to the bottom of what the ‘narrow Fellow in the Grass’ means and why Dickinson is writing about him.

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’ is one of Emily Dickinson’s most popular poems. Yet it is also an extremely subtle and elliptical piece of poetry, whose meaning proves elusive. In this post, we’re going to explore some of the implications of Dickinson’s central comparison between ‘My Life’ and ‘a Loaded Gun’, analysing the language and imagery of the poem.

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘It sifts from leaden sieves’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘It sifts from leaden sieves’ is a wonderful Emily Dickinson poem; it is also a beautiful winter poem. In a few lines, Dickinson captures the movement of the snow and the way it settles upon the winter landscape, rendering the road, the railings of the fence, and the lampposts different and strange. Below is the poem, followed by a few words of analysis.

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, —
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Because I could not stop for Death’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

In ‘Because I could not stop for Death’ Emily Dickinson writes about one of her favourite subjects: death. But the journey she describes is intriguing: is it faintly comical, or grimly macabre? Below are some notes towards an analysis of ‘Because I could not stop for Death’ which address the poem’s language and meaning.