By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘I started Early – Took my Dog’ is one of those Emily Dickinson poems that repay careful consideration of not only its literal meaning but the symbolic, other meaning which its images and double meanings appear to gesture towards. The poem requires a bit of close analysis to tease out this other interpretation, however, so here goes …
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘I should not dare to leave my friend’ is one of Emily Dickinson’s great poems about friendship. Although she lived her life as a recluse in Amherst, Massachusetts, friendship mattered a great deal to Dickinson, as did family.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A drop fell on the apple tree’ is sometimes known by the title ‘Summer Shower’, although Dickinson (1830-86), famously, didn’t give titles to most of her poems. (It was Dickinson’s original editors, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, who gave the poem the title by which it has become most familiar.)
A Drop fell on the Apple Tree –
Another – on the Roof –
A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves –
And made the Gables laugh –
A few went out to help the Brook,
That went to help the Sea –
Myself Conjectured were they Pearls –
What Necklaces could be –
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Emily Dickinson (1830-86) rarely did things the simple way. She used rhyme, but just as often used half-rhyme or pararhyme; she almost always wrote in quatrains, but sometimes broke away from these to write longer stanzas; when she writes about snow she does so without ever actually mentioning that that is her subject. In ‘Ah Moon – and Star!’ she writes a love poem, but, as we might expect from Emily Dickinson, she does so in a quite unexpected way.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Emily Dickinson’s individual and idiosyncratic way of looking at the world led her to write some wonderfully unique poems – about snow, about cats, about death. One of the recurring themes of her work is faith and religion, which she explores in ‘The Child’s faith is new’.
The Child’s faith is new –
Whole – like His Principle –
Wide – like the Sunrise
On fresh Eyes –
Never had a Doubt –
Laughs – at a Scruple –
Believes all sham
But Paradise –