The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

She discovers new sides to each of them, comes at them from new angles, and by investigating each theme again and again in seemingly contradictory ways, she is finding the truth in her “Circuits.”ĭickinson also clearly shows that truth is found more easily in negative or painful emotions.

Her poems come back to these central themes again and again, but they are never treated in exactly the same way. This is reflected in how she deals with all of her other themes. She knows that this is close to impossible-like “To fill a Gap” teaches, answering one question just leads to further questions-yet she also posits that a kind of truth can be found, if done so circuitously, as in “Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant –.” Truth and its tenuous natureĭickinson is fascinated and obsessed with the idea of truth, and with finding it in her poems. Death is the ultimate unknowable, and so Dickinson circles around it, painting portraits of each of its many facets, as a way to come as close to knowing it as she can. All of these varied pictures of death, however, do not truly contradict each other. In “Some – Work for Immortality –,” death is the moment where the speaker can cash their check of good behavior for their eternal rewards. In “My life had stood – a Loaded Gun –,” the existence of death allows for the existence of life. In “Behind Me dips – Eternity,” death is the normal state, life is but an interruption. In “Because I could not stop for Death –,“ she personifies death, and presents the process of dying as simply the realization that there is eternal life. In “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –,” Dickinson investigates the physical process of dying. Death is sometimes gentle, sometimes menacing, sometimes simply inevitable.

No two poems have exactly the same understanding of death, however. Death is one of the foremost themes in Dickinson’s poetry.

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson