Week 10

"Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit,- Life!"(pg. 27)

Though I had a very difficult time making sense out of most Emily Dickinson's poems, there seemed to be a theme that I did understand in her poetry. She tends to have a dark, dreary outlook on life in general. From this poem we see that she is referring to life as a culprit, meaning that life is guilty of something. Perhaps she is so bitter towards life because of the pain and suffering it brought her. For example, she was never married, her best friend married and hardly ever spoke to her after that,she was not a very social person and remained a recluse for the majority of her life. Now I am not saying that someone needs to be a social freak or married in order to find happiness in their life, but I do believe that you must have friends to understand what happiness is. I think we would all be a little depressed and have a negative or gloomy outlook on life if all we did was stay in the house and write poems. I feel like maybe Dickinson's poems were an outlet for her depressive state. Her poems became her best friends, they were always there for her to talk to and they would never leave her and marry off. In a way, I respect her independant attitude, but she really should have found someone besides her poems to rely on.

"Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat-
You must have walked-
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!"(pg. 142)

In light of this being March and March Madness beginning, I picked this poem as one of the poems to reflect on(I know, very poetic of me, right?!)... As mentioned before, I'm not very good at poetry, especially Emily Dickinson's poetry. It is very difficult for me to unpack... But I can relate to this particular poem. When March rolls around and it begins to warm up outside, it really is like something is coming back into my life that has been missing for several months. As Dickinson puts it, an old friend is coming back after an extended absence. This poem also makes me think of March Madness, the college basketball tournament for those of you who are wondering... It's probably my second favorite sporting event next to the baseball playoffs. I just can't wait for that opening weekend where it's pretty much 4 straight days of never ending, emotion packed basketball. If March Madness was a person, I'd definately invite him/her(?) inside and tell me all about it's journey..... seriously.

"We outgrow love like other things
And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
Like costumes grandsires wore." (pg. 192)

I think just about all of us can relate to what Dickinson is saying here. How many of us have dated someone, thought they were the one we were going to spend our life with, and then it ended up not working out? Maybe that's just me but I think it happens to most everyone like it may have happened to Dickinson. Our former boyfriends/girlfriends are now just old memories or antiques which we store in the drawers of our mind. We outgrew them and put them away only to bring them out when remembering our past relationships. They become sort of like a collection that we store. Are we proud of our collection? I think some are. I think some people walk around looking to add more to their collection and never stop to think about who they are hurting in the process. Somehow, along the way, these people have become numb to their own feelings and have learned to get past the hurt or ups and downs of relationships...


"During a visit to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1855, Dickinson met the Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Sixteen years older than her, a brilliant preacher, and already married, he was hardly more than a mental image of a lover. There is no doubt she made him this, but nothing more. He visited her once in 1860. When he moved to San Francisco, California, in May 1862, she was in despair."

Read more: Emily Dickinson Biography - life, family, name, death, mother, young, information, born, college, house, time, year, sister http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Dickinson-Emily.html#ixzz0iGyGkBlO


Perhaps one or two broken hearts was all Dickinson could handle. She obviously had her heart toyed with/broken by Charles Wadsworth. Thinking they were lovers but he actually moved away from her made her think otherwise. Perhaps this is the reason for her secluding herself from the rest of the world and becoming a recluse. Maybe she just got too scared of another broken heart and therefore she dared not take another chance with her heart.

Do you think it was Dickinson's life experiences which shaped her into the woman she became(secluded, gloomy, depressive)? Or do you think it was just in her DNA? She was just born that way. What are your thoughts?