Summary of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Summary
Part III of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson speaks about various perceptions of love, at least in the words of the renowned poet Emily Dickinson. As the poems speak generally about love, Dickinson has explored its several associated realities through her poems. The legacy of heartbreak is one aspect Dickinson has tackled in discussing love, seeing it as an inevitable circumstance, in which she says, “You left me two sweet legacies – a legacy of loveyou left me boundaries of pain.” Reservations on the amount of love given by partners to one another stands as another concern Dickinson has noted, followed by the somewhat related aspect of gender struggles in love. As Dickinson discussed primarily love between heterosexual partners, she recognized the inevitability that the woman may find herself in a dominant position and vice-versa, which she succinctly expressed in this wise, “I’m wife; I’ve finished that, that other state, I’m czar, I’m woman now; it’s safer so”. Having lived in a time wherein the superiority of men lives supreme, Dickinson has a profound grasp of the realization that women commit sacrifices as they take on the responsibilities of wifehood, sometimes with undertones of male dominance wrought by the false regality of the woman as a goddess upon entering marriage (Stade 152-183).
In Part IV of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson emphasized her reflections on time and eternity, with the prevailing theme of ethereality of human life being the center of a vast number of poems therein. Dickinson first noted that change comes along with the progression of time, the inevitability of which she encapsulated through the following: “Grand go the years in the crescents above them, worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row.” Along with change is another notable aspect that relates well with human life – death. Dickinson incorporated such a theme to note that it could cause the eventual obscurity of human legacy, as she noted through the passage, “Until the moss had reached our lips, and covered up our names.” For Dickinson, death is both an event of commemoration and a gateway to obscurity. The death of a person affords people the opportunity to remember him and his life, both candidly and as a form of tribute, yet time allows those people as well to forget the pain caused by his death towards their eventual deaths. Moreover, Dickinson takes on the perspective of a dying person, noting the personal manner of his experience as his life ends. Portraying the end of day, Dickinson shares the perspective of a dying person through this wise, “How well I knew the light before! I could not see it now” (Stade 188-254).
Dickinson finally characterizes her life as an unmarried woman in Part V of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, which she aptly named “The Single Hound.” In describing loneliness associated with being unmarried, Dickinson says of the constant adventure and freedom that such kind of life brings, noting that “Adventure most unto itself the soul condemned to be.” On a personal level, Dickinson expressed her perceptions on the follies of fame and the ethereal happiness it brings, alongside the different perceptions held by people towards one another, which she expressed through the following: “Perception of an object costs precise the object’s loss.” In saying so, Dickinson noted that various perceptions do not produce objective definitions of various things, hence called “subjects”. Most notably, however, is the emphasis of Dickinson on the value of solitude as it is present in the life of an unmarried person, saying, “Society shall be, compared with that profounder site” (Stade 264-318).
Dickinson has become highly reflective of personal experiences in detailing her poems through the three aforementioned categories. In Part III, on love, Dickinson has fully encompassed the meaning of love in different manners – romantic, friendly and filial. Although it may appear at first that Dickinson is solely describing romantic love, she nevertheless talks about consequent pain and suffering – elements that apply to the general concept of love. It is not just during romantic relationship fallouts where humans become heartbroken. The loss of a friend, estrangement from family members and the like bring suffering to humans, simply because such violates what they ought to expect in expressing love to other people. Part IV, on time and eternity, reflects on the constancy of change measurable through time and its passage. Dickinson notes that time stands as a consumable entity that is unrecoverable through any means. In that case, Dickinson recognizes that time is a precious entity that needs wise spending, as she has spoken of regrets, the feeling of loss and the eventual inevitability of going towards obscurity. Moreover, Dickinson highlights death as a purely personal issue that could not find solid empirical observations at the personal level. Only the dying person could have a clear idea on what it feels to experience death, while other people could only look on as observers of the process, hence the existence of speculative notions on it that includes ideas on death being another transition to a larger aspect of life or a movement towards another dimension. Finally, Part V somewhat plays as an account of the experiences of an unmarried woman - something that Dickinson is. Dickinson noted that being alone is not necessarily a curse, as it affords her and other similarly situated people the benefit of freedom, objectivity and solitude.
Works Cited
Stade, William (Ed.). The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Print.
