Emily Dickinson – Page 6 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘On a Columnar Self’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘On a Columnar Self’ by Emily Dickinson does something which Emily Dickinson frequently does so well: it takes an abstract idea (the concept of the self) and renders it concrete and vivid, through a well-chosen metaphor.

On a Columnar Self—
How ample to rely
In Tumult—or Extremity—
How good the Certainty

That Lever cannot pry—
And Wedge cannot divide
Conviction—That Granitic Base—
Though None be on our Side—

Suffice Us—for a Crowd—
Ourself—and Rectitude—
And that Assembly—not far off
From furthest Spirit—God—

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘For each ecstatic instant’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘For each ecstatic instant’ is a short lyric by Emily Dickinson about the relationship between pleasure and pain, joy and suffering. The Earl of Rochester, in the seventeenth century, had asked, ‘All this to love and rapture’s due; / Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?’ In ‘For each ecstatic instant’, Emily Dickinson answers with a resounding, if regretful, Yes.

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years —
Bitter contested farthings —
And Coffers heaped with Tears!

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Safe in their alabaster chambers’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Safe in their Alabaster Chambers’ is about one of Emily Dickinson’s favourite themes: death. But, as so often with an Emily Dickinson poem, her treatment of this perennial theme is far from straightforward.

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –
Untouched by Morning –
And untouched by noon –
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection –
Rafter of Satin – and Roof of Stone!

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘As imperceptibly as grief’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘As imperceptibly as grief’ describes the passing of summer, which happens so slowly and subtly that it is almost missed. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing: it happens ‘as imperceptibly as Grief’, suggesting that something is coming to a close but brighter times are just coming into view. An unusual take on the onset of autumn, admittedly, but one of the many reasons why Emily Dickinson’s poems repay closer analysis: they avoid the obvious take on things, and offer a strikingly individual perspective on the natural world.

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away –
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy –
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon –
The Dusk drew earlier in –
The Morning foreign shone –

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

We often talk of being ‘drunk on love’ or ‘drunk on excitement’ or other such things. Here, in ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’, Emily Dickinson takes such an everyday expression and makes it concrete, using the metaphor of drunkenness to describe her heady intoxication with nature.