Introduction
“My Life Had Stood” is a brilliant and enigmatic poem that delineates Emily Dickinson as an artist, the woman who must deny her femininity; nay, even her humanity to achieve the epitome of her persona, as well as the fullness of her power in her poetry.
The poem was composed when Dickinson had attained the peak of her writing career. The poem represents her most extreme attempt to describe the volcanic nature of the power of art which she righteously claims as her own. She speaks with the voice of a gun – explosive and destructive and not as a woman who nurtures – one who is weak, soft, and pleasant. On the contrary, in terms of the poem, she is a “gun” and rage is part of her being, in so far as it permits her to explode. In the art she professes to be hers, she is not to be denied. She is master of herself, no matter how aggressive, masculine, or inhuman society may judge her to be.
Ideas of Dickinson poems
Through her works, Dickinson reveals her true self within her alienation, her aggressiveness, her desire for revenge, and her power to kill that the poem intends to express all aspects of her true and unacceptable self. My Life Had Stood is a poem central to understanding the poet and the condition of the woman artist, particularly in the nineteenth century. Dickinson was prepared to grapple with the difficulties confronting women writers of her time.
“My Life Had Stood”
In the first stanza, the term “identified” refers to the conversion experiences that permit the individual to be a Christian to another Christian and herself. The Christian narrative form in this poem is enacted as the object/instrument role of the gun. The master story confers identity on the gun. The “sovereign woods” designate the limits within which “we”, both master and gun, are free to “roam and hunt.”
During the process of the poem, the object, the “gun” increasingly takes on the status of the subject. In the second verse, the gun speaks “for” the master. In other words, her function becomes an extension of his power, his will, and his voice.
In the third verse, she no longer acts for the master but describes an exchange between herself and the mountain since they respond to each other’s alterity or “otherness”. In recognizing the “otherness”, the gun acquires an identity distinct from her purpose in her master’s life.
In the fourth verse, she still serves her master by “guarding his head”. For her, it is more advisable to ally herself with catastrophic power like that of volcanoes – like Versuvins than to sharing intimacy with him (primarily a sexual one).
Shared intimacy, in her view, would bring nothing better than aggressive self-reliance. In My Life Had Stood and other poems, Dickinson’s often violent transactions with what is “outside” her, reflect a situation for women poets of the Anglo-American tradition. She has been identified with phallic power (the loaded gun’s power).
In the next to the last stanza, the master disappears; his story is eclipsed by the difference rendered as the gun’s increasing embodiment. In the last stanza, the ambiguity of the poem represents the difficulty as well as relative success Dickinson has, in creating a text preserving the relationship of equality that exists between herself and her reader. This is reflected in the exchange between the gun and the mountain in the poem.
Considering Dickinson’s time and upbringing, it is unlikely that she would have been comfortable with the high degree of rage and aggression exhibited in this remarkable poem. However, whether or not we are comfortable, like Dickinson, we must deal with them.
‘The Wind Began To Rock the Grass’ (2nd version of The Wind Began to Knead the Grass)
It is generally accepted that second versions are improved versions. We shall now prove this to be true as we analyze the poem about a storm as written by Emily Dickinson.
The first two lines of the original poem constitute a simile comparing the Wind to a woman kneading dough to a metaphor in the second version. This metaphor has a masculine subject, capable of destroying both earth and sky.
This is more consistent with the violent nature of storms. Attributing housewifely qualities to a tempest just won’t do.
The wind is so strong that it would seem as though the leaves themselves were capable of unhooking themselves from the trees and scattering themselves all over.
In the second stanza, it seems that through the power of the wind, the dust of the road, like hands, scooped itself and destroyed all appearances of the road’s being once a decent thoroughfare.
Next, the writer tells of the violent result of the storm on both humans and animals. The “quickening of wagons” may mean the movement of a child within its mother’s womb, a sign of life; but it could more aptly refer to the hastened speed with which the drivers travel to reach home sooner and avoid the rage of the storm.
Again, in the original, thunder is personified and likened to women gossiping in whispers. In the second version, there is a more threatening quality given to thunder that “hurried slow”. This is paradoxical unless the reader considers the slow rumbling sound produced which belies the speed at which lightning (the source of the sound) moves across the heavens.
In the same stanza, lightning is compared to a predatory bird, such as the buzzard with a yellow beak and a livid claw, instead of a livid toe which is less dangerous. Other birds do whatever they can to provide safety for their young in the nest, while cattle flee to their barns. This is no weather fit for man or beast.
In the second to the last stanza, the storm begins, as presaged by “one drop of Giant Rain”. One drop is as small as another; but for the poet, the first raindrop that falls is a “drop of Giant Rain” that predicts extraordinary rainfall – a deluge. The “dams” mentioned appear to be – not the dams on earth, (built by human hands” but the floodgates of Heaven that parted hold and wrecked the sky. The reader will not be surprised if Dickinson meant the Great Flood in Noah’s day that bypassed “My Father’s House” but not the rest of His creation on earth.
This particular poem exemplifies the poet’s penchant for the masculine as depicted by everything that is forceful, ruthless, lethal, even, that characterizes a storm and is evident and in her poetry.