Dickinson

These poems are dark and ominous. That was quite blunt but when reading this poems I saw the reoccurring theme of death or struggle. Most people see death as an ugly terrible thing but Dickinson describes death in a way I have never heard before. She seems almost obsessed with the death theme. Death is the biggest mystery in the world and that may be why she tries to understand through her poems. When reading her poems I started to notice she would capitalize certain important words for example,

“To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

 And Crucifixion, shown”(Dickinson 1212). She does this in all her poems to try to get across the importance of these words. Crucifixion stuck out to me because she continuously as religious themes throughout the poem.

In the poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” Dickinson describes death as a carriage service picking and dropping people off. The opening sentence is a great way about how people think about death, “Because I could not stop for Death-He kindly stopped for me” (Dickinson 1214). We all want to death to pass us but we cannot escape it. It will come no matter what and it will wait for you like a carriage taking you away from this earth. This poem I thought was one of Dickinson nice soft poem when describing death but in the poem “ I Heard a Fly Buzz” she tries to connect to the moment right before death. “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died- The Stillness in the Air.” That makes me think of the last moment before death comes and what you hear, see, smell, taste, and feel. Its kind of interesting to think about that 1-second moment and Dickinson does her best to take you there. Overall Emily Dickinson changed the how people viewed death and she will always be remembered as a great American poet.