'Because I Could Not Stop For Death': Emily Dickinson's Mediation on Mortality

In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, hosts Joe and Maiya delve into the hauntingly serene world of Emily Dickinson with a close reading and analysis of her iconic poem, ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death.’ 

They analyze Dickinson’s portrayal of death as a kind companion, exploring themes of immortality, religious context, and classical allusions, particularly the comparison to Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology. The discussion highlights Dickinson's unique position in the literary canon, her secluded life, and how her personal experiences and religious influences shaped her contemplative writing style.

The hosts also address the challenges of interpreting her work, given the posthumous publication of many of her poems, emphasizing her significant impact on American poetry despite her reclusive life. Additionally, they touch on the broader implications of analyzing posthumously published works, comparing Dickinson's isolated genius to contemporaries like Walt Whitman and Robert Frost, and exploring how her intimate, introspective voice has defined her lasting literary legacy.

Poetry+ users can access exclusive PDFs of ‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’:

• ​Full PDF Guide
• PDF Snapshot Guide
• Printable Poem PDF
  • with Rhyme Scheme
  • with Meter Syllables
  • with both Rhyme and Meter

For more on Emily Dickinson’s poetry, visit PoemAnalysis.com, where you can also explore extensive resources in our PDF Learning Library, browse hundreds of analyzed poems, and much more – see our Emily Dickinson PDF Guide.

Tune in and discover:

• The gentle yet radical portrayal of death as a companion
• Dickinson’s blending of Christian and pagan influences
• The power of meter to evoke a hymn-like qu

Transcript

'Because I Could Not Stop For Death': Emily Dickinson's Mediation on Mortality (Transcript)
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Maiya: [00:00:00] Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away My labour and my leisure too, for his civility. We passed the school where children strove at recess in the ring, We passed the fields of gazing grain, we passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us. The dews drew quivering and chill, For only gossamer my gown, my tippet only tulle. We paused before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground, The roof was scarcely visible, the cornice in the ground. Since then, tis centuries, and yet feel shorter than the day, I first surmised the horse's heads were towards eternity. 

Joe: Welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to [00:01:00] you by the team at Poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. Thank you so much for that reading, Maiya, of today's poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, by Emily Dickinson. We're going to be discussing a range of themes today, including Dickinson's portrayal of death, the influence of religious thought on her work, and her unique position in literary history.

But Maiya, before we talk about the poem itself, can you tell us a little bit more about Dickinson as a poet and her position in 19th century life,

Maiya: Of course, so Dickinson actually occupies a really singular position in the literary canon. She was born in 1830 in Massachusetts and died in 1886. Now for the majority of her life she was actually a recluse.

What we know about Dickinson, it is mediated mostly through letters that she wrote to friends and confidants. She actually spent the majority of her time, from what we understand, in her room. Now, the reason this is interesting is because we talk a lot on this podcast about how.

The influence of other poets, the influence of [00:02:00] being part of a movement can massively impact the poetry you write. And I think it's safe to say that Dickinson's poetry is unlike any other. It truly is singular in the sense that, from what we can gather, she really had nobody proofreading, editing her work.

Nobody to hugely influence or impact her style either. And Now in terms of background, she was very well educated, she came from a fairly affluent family, her father was a prominent lawyer and congressman. She was relatively Lavinia, who would be the one to discover most of her work after her death. Now, during her lifetime, she had, I believe it was ten poems published and one letter. After her death, over 1, 800 were discovered. Now this is where we get the bulk of her work. So Jo, with this poem, can you tell us a little bit more about it?

Joe: Well, I think I'd like to begin with the way in which death [00:03:00] itself is portrayed, because it's one of the things about this poem that has really stood the test of time, this very powerful and unique portrayal of death. So, just to reiterate those first two lines of the poem, Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.

And the decision to personify death, to give death agency in this poem is really, really interesting because despite the fact that Dickinson is, of course, writing in a very Christian context, this harks back to kind of pre Christian ideas about what death is and how death acts within the world. So. I know, Maiya, that you're as interested as I am about sort of classical retellings and classical allusions in poetry.

We talk about this a lot on the podcast, and this to me really calls back to those kind of ancient Greek portrayals of death, whether it's through the god Tantalus, the god of death, or whether it's through the figure of Charon, the ferryman. And given, of course, the fact that death in Dickinson's poem is driving a carriage, is taking somebody somewhere.

That relationship with Charon, the [00:04:00] ferryman, who takes souls across the River Styx after they die, I think is a really strong connection. I mean, what do you think about that? Can you tell us a little bit more about the way in which Charon is evoked in this poem? You know, what your views on the presentation of death are?



Maiya: I think the point that you raise about Christian theology is one that is very much worth exploring with these two lines in particular. Because, in Christian theology you have the opposing figures of God and the devil, right? These two figures that are really strongly juxtaposed throughout the whole biblical text. Now, what this serves to do in the bible is to create A really strong feeling of what is good and what is not.

You have good and evil as two opposing forces, right? In the modern consciousness, death is so often conflated with the latter. It is something that is portrayed negatively, it is. It's scary, it is used as something that is quite dark and looming.[00:05:00] 

This poem doesn't do that. From the outset, death is given kindness. Death is given gentleness. I love that Dickinson is able to take something that could instill fear in so many people and transmute it into something that is soft and, and sweet in a way, you know, death being personified in a way that.

He stops the carriage. I mean, this is very little. He stops the carriage to allow her to board because she is unable to. It offers her friendship from him. It offers her a companion. And for someone who, and again, this is something we touch on a lot in this podcast, is impact your reception of a poem.

But for a poet that was so often alone. Writing this poem, most likely alone, in her room, not looking to get it published anywhere. To write something that is so kind to a companion that is so often deemed as something negative is really telling [00:06:00] of, I think, her world outlook, really. I think that image of the ferryman, that image of someone who is simply doing a job And not creating an end is one that is critical to the reception of this poem. And I really love the fact that in this poem, when we explore death, death as a companion figure offers a lot more gentleness and kindness.

Death, in so many ways, represents an end, at least in many Western religions. Despite having some form of an afterlife, it is a passing on. For Dickinson in this poem, Death becomes that ferryman, becomes that companion to hand her over to a life of immortality. When you look at the Christian narrative, there very much is a black and white, good and evil split. Now, this is something Emily Dickinson doesn't lean into, which is so interesting about the way she writes, is that she really exists in the grey area. 

And I just love how soft and subtle this is portrayed. It is not this [00:07:00] huge change. It is as simple as getting into a carriage to take a journey. There's a lot more balance there, but what do you think, Joe?

Joe: I mean, I love that point. And I think it's really important just to get the nuances of kind of Dickinson's religious background here. So the world in which Dickinson lived in was a religious world, but it was a Protestant world. So what that means in terms of that lack of middle ground is if you come from the Catholic tradition, you at least have the kind of existence of what we call purgatory, which is that kind of middle ground where you are.

Not immediately granted access to heaven, but nor have you done anything particularly terrible to send you to hell. The Protestant tradition doesn't have purgatory, so it is very binary. You are either a good enough person to enter heaven, or you are a bad enough person to justify being punished in hell.

And what Dickinson refuses to do is accept that binary. And I think we get that strongly evoked if I could actually just jump to the final stanza of the poem, because there was a specific mention of the word centuries. That tendency to measure things in spans of a hundred years I actually think is really significant because again it [00:08:00] calls back to the figure of Charon and if we can just briefly go back to the ancient world So the story goes souls that had the proper funeral rites could be granted access across the River Styx and again It's important for us to note that That is not the moment of judgment.

Judgment occurs once the soul has crossed the River Styx. You can still be punished, rewarded, or sort of just accepted in the Underworld. This is just about getting there. But crucially what the stories tell us is that souls that did not have the proper funeral rites have to wait on the shores of the River Styx for a century, for 100 years before Charon will agree to take them on.

So there is that sense of this kind of limbo space that is almost a pre judgment. There's no sense in this poem of the speaker being taken, presumably having died, otherwise death wouldn't have come for her, but there is no sense that they've been judged or that judgment is imminent. There is a feeling of deferral when it comes to the judgment. And I think that's one of the things about the poem that I find so enduringly fascinating because she's writing against that [00:09:00] religious context with kind of great subtlety while calling back to the classical world.

One of the things that makes a poem more complex is actually the way the poem itself resembles some Christian works. So the poem is written like many of Dickinson's poetry in common meter, which for those who aren't aware means the lines alternate between being written in iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.

Now that's significant because lots of hymns and religious songs also are written in common meter. So just some examples that many of our listeners will be aware of. , The Christmas Carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and the hymn Amazing Grace are both written in common meter.

So, despite the fact that Dickinson is taking a really kind of ambivalent look at the Christian world by deliberately situating her poem in kind of pre Christian pagan context, she is also kind of alluding to that world. She is almost presenting the poem as though it were some kind of religious hymn.

And I find the balance of those two things to be one of the really subtly powerful things about this poem.

Maiya: And [00:10:00] again, intention is one of the things I'm sure we'll discuss later on, Joe, but to look at this a little bit broader for a second, these poems, and this poem in particular, was not published by her. She was highly likely writing this at home, inspired by the things she was listening to, using the inspiration around her, particularly in her town, as a jumping off point to write these poems. In 1845 in Amherst, Massachusetts, there was actually a religious revival where lots of people within the town reaffirmed their faith. So Christianity was very much on the rise. It was a bit of a national trend at this point. We're looking at a poet who was writing within that context. So I love the idea that actually she's kind of internalizing a lot of these religious. overtones and making them something that really speaks to her personally.

Joe: Yeah, I think that's a fascinating point. And I think, again, we can't read Dickinson's poetry without considering the impact of the biography that you mentioned earlier on. This was somebody who had travelled [00:11:00] extremely little. I mean, she barely left Amherst, . So, I think it's really fascinating the way she considers death, you know, the final journey, is through the lens of a physical journey.

Journeys that she did not take very often. I mean, of course, she had been in carriages to go to, The, you know, relatively few public occasions that she did attend, but this notion of taking a long journey was not something familiar to her. And it's, I think it's really fascinating that she mediates her views on death through the lens of this physical journey that to her would have felt very unnatural. 

Maiya: And I mean, just to add to that, you know, you mentioned about that sense of delay. This is a poem that is not in a rush at all. If I just jump forward to the second stanza, we slowly drove, he knew no haste. As I said before, very kind, very gentle, but also very considerate.

It feels as if her relationship with death is not one that is fraught by fear is one that is very considerate of her feelings and how she would want to approach a [00:12:00] situation. A poem like this very much stands in odds to a poem like Dylan Thomas's Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which is really quite, angry and averse to that final moment. Whereas for Dickinson here, it feels like this, yes, is a journey, but it doesn't necessarily have an end point. She says that the horse's heads were towards eternity. And that the carriage held immortality. Both of these aren't final destinations. They are endless. And I really think that helps to slow the poem down.

Joe: I'm really glad you mentioned Dylan Thomas's poem because I think it's a fascinating sort of companion piece because when we think about famous poetic portrayals of death and the final moments before it, these two poems are often sort of raised in those conversations and I think it's really interesting because Dickinson's poem has a real sense of gentleness, a real sense of calmness and acceptance that perhaps stands in opposition to a poem like that and I think Her ability to mediate really strong, [00:13:00] intense emotions through the gentleness of language is one of the things that makes the poem so enduringly powerful because, I mean, just to give a brief sense of context here, one year before that religious revival that Maiya mentioned earlier, Emily Dickinson's beloved cousin passed away very suddenly through illness and It's difficult to overstate how much this affected the poet.

I mean, she was completely heartbroken. In fact, she wrote her the letter at the time that, quote, it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her. Or even look at her face. And that kind of very raw, very dramatic outpouring of grief is kind of conspicuous by its absence here.

There is almost a sense that in the years between the death of her cousin in 1844 and the writing of this poem, Dickinson has been able to kind of work through that. But there is a really interesting lack of intensity at times. There is a real lack of urgency not only in regard to the figure of death who as you mentioned is in No haste, but also in the speaker [00:14:00] Almost as though they are happy to be taken to this place that they're going because they know they'll be reunited with a loved one And that kind of ambivalence, that acceptance, is really fascinating, especially when one considers the way in which death is ordinarily portrayed as this great climactic moment in poetry and art more generally.

Maiya: Let's not forget as well that this poem is framed in such a unique way. It actually tracks not just the passing of a day, but also tracks a full life As you follow through the stanzas, you first meet a school where children are at recess, and then we end with what is often construed to be a grave in the ground.

Now there's two points that I think are really worth dwelling on. One is that sense of scale of time, but two is the fact that when this poem ends, The sun is setting, but it has not set yet. So, Jo, would you like to tell us a little bit more about what this represents?

Joe: Yeah, I'd love to. And it's, it's really fascinating. There's a lot of layers to Dickinson's portrayal of the sun, because obviously on the one hand, we use the [00:15:00] passing of the sun as a really easily measurable example of the passage of time, right? The passing of the sun, it rises, it falls, and thus a day takes place.

And yet we can also view that 24 hour cycle as a metaphor for an entire life, right? The rising, peaking, and setting of the sun, that is often used as a metaphor to represent an entire lifespan of 60, 70, 80, a hundred years. What I find particularly fascinating about this poem is it doesn't really offer a clear sense of which of those interpretations Dickinson favors,

in fact, of course it could be both. Because every time a day passes for all of us, for some people that is their first day, for others it is the midpoint of their lives, and for others it is the last time. So that kind of concurrent symbolism I think is really interesting.

But the thing I think I would really like to focus on, and it's between those two stanzas, is the third stanza concludes, we passed the setting sun. But the following stanza begins, Or rather, he passed us. So there's a few things to unpick there. One, it's another example of personification. The son now is being personified.

So this [00:16:00] relationship between individual people and kind of abstract elements of the natural world, death, the son, the whole poem is imbued with personality, imbued with agency. But the thing I'm really interested in that is this notion of who is passing who. Because of course, The notion of we past the sun implies that we kind of existed beyond it.

We were able to outlast it, we were able to go beyond the light of the sun. But it also implies movement, and we know that Dickinson's figure is in a carriage. There is a sense there of progression. When we get that line, he past us, suddenly the focus shifts, and it's much more likely that the speaker is therefore in a stationary position.

Because the significance of claiming that the sun passed us implies the speaker is now stationary. And as Maiya mentioned, it very quickly becomes clear that actually they are stationary because they have reached the destination.

I'm careful not to use the word final destination because as we've said, the poem sort of goes back and forth on where that destination might be. But we have reached this coffin. We have reached the place [00:17:00] of burial. And after that, of course, it is the sun that will move by and you will appear stationary.

And I think the way in which he uses that symbol to concurrently represent a very brief amount of time in 24 hours, an enormous amount of time in a life, .

But also the way that Dickon uses it to represent the stillness that awaits them when they are buried. That kind of stationary permanence that awaits us all is absolutely fascinating to me.

Maiya: And tense is so important here because as you enter this poem, you're introduced to something that you believe from the outset is in really the immediate past. Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. You feel as if she's relating this story to you, perhaps as you sit in the carriage with her. As she's just disembarked, maybe. However, that final stanza changes everything. Dickinson has told a beautiful story about this passing of time. And in that first line of the last stanza, Since then, tis centuries. She [00:18:00] completely overturns a reader's sense of time and scale by telling you that the speaker is relating a story from centuries before. What an incredible way to, as we often say, wrong foot your reader. You really enter this poem with the assumption that perhaps the speaker, yes, though they are post death, that it is maybe an experience they have just had. The carriage ride, the freshness of those memories seems so clear to be.

a short term memory and yet finding out at the end of this poem that the speaker is actually retelling a memory that has been centuries old, I think when an average reader approaches this poem it's very, it's not beyond the scope of belief that at least with a slightly westernized view of religion, it's very easy to listen to a tale like this, especially one that recounts a journey, even if it is after death, to still find the humanity in the speaker, [00:19:00] you know, we have a very strange conception of what is ghostly and monstrous and slightly removed from the real world, especially when you talk about, you know, people that have been dead for centuries in this instance.

You spend the majority of this poem believing that the speaker is someone who is just past that point of humanity, they have just tipped over the edge, they have just passed away, and yet right at the end when you find out they have been dead for centuries, for me it entirely flips it on its head because you have been sympathizing, and especially in a Christian context, you've been sympathizing with someone who has been dead for centuries. Now what I think this primarily plays into is, She had experienced grief in a strong, strong way. cousin impacted her for life. So when she says, 'Tis centuries and yet feels shorter than the day, yes, that can be a commentary on the journey that she is envisioning, but it's also a [00:20:00] commentary on grief and how long that can last.

Though you can love someone and cherish them, the grief that you endure, whether it's A month, a year, ten years, a hundred years. The love and the grief that you endured doesn't go away. 

Joe: We hope you're enjoying this episode of Beyond the Verse, but if you can't wait for the next one to get your hit of poetry analysis and discussion, you can go to poemanalysis.com right now and we are very happy to announce that Poetry+ users will now have exclusive access to our very own bespoke, AI chatbots specifically trained on PoetryAnalysis.com resources so the best way to get immediate responses to any questions any poetry questions is to go to poemanalysis.

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Maiya: [00:21:00] So before the break, we touched on the importance of time within this poem. Now, I would like to extrapolate this a little bit because we know so little about Emily Dickinson's literary process. She actually wrote over 1, 800 poems in her lifetime. Now for a poem like Because I Could Not Stop for Death, that is so considered in its approach, Now It really sits at odds to the sort of writer that we assume her to be.

Someone who could barely contain her words. So much so that she had to write them on a page almost all day, every day. Now it asks a very interesting question of our analysis of Emily Dickinson. Because we still don't know whether her intention was to publish these poems. We're very lucky to have the wealth of poems that we do. However, We don't know whether these are final drafts, first drafts. We don't know whether perhaps these were her personal diaries. So, Jo, I have a slightly complicated question to ask you But how much do you think our analysis can be, [00:22:00] you know, correct or even right in addressing some of the things we explore within a poem like this?

Joe: Wow. Well, I mean, it is a very big question. And again, if you'll allow me just to sort of flesh out my answer before I, before I give it, I think it's important for listeners to note that Dickinson is far from the only poet about whom we've discovered more things after their death, right? I mean, almost every major writer of note leaves behind unpublished material, notes, letters that offer some kind of insight into their process.

For Dickinson to have virtually the entirety of her literary reputation to be developed after her death is very, very unusual. As Mai mentioned earlier on, ten poems and one letter published during her lifetime. So, we're looking at a fraction of the overall work. And I think Dickinson is so unique insofar as she almost feels like a figure from a thousand years ago because of those gaps, because of that, Ignorance that we have as kind of academic scholars and readers about [00:23:00] her work.

I mean 1830 to 1886, as Maiya mentioned, was her lifespan. That is not really that old. I mean, it might seem old to us in terms of an individual lifespan, but in terms of literary studies, I mean, we study people from thousands of years ago about who we know very little and knowing very little about those people is kind of assumed.

When you compare Dickinson to some of her contemporaries, we know so much more about their process. We know so much more about them as figures because they were publishing during their lives and there was Kind of a public need to record and investigate. I think it does really affect the way we talk about her as a poet I think not only is her Lack of published work during her lifetime and influence but also her seclusion because what that allows us to do is Cast the net much wider when it comes to her influences because ultimately she didn't have a great many real life experiences on which to draw.

She was very reclusive. She didn't go out a lot. She never saw the sea, for example, despite the fact that some of her poetic descriptions of the sea are really, really moving [00:24:00] and really unique. And I think ordinarily, I mean, Myra and I have talked in previous episodes of Beyond the Verse about the importance of, you know, the people with which poets are interacting.

We talked about Kamala Das and her family members, we talked about the significance of different literary movements and the importance of being in the environment surrounded by your peers. With Dickinson we have to kind of redefine the parameters of what influence looks like. 

So I think you have to approach a poet about whom we know less than we would like with a certain degree of humility when it comes to making assertions about their work. But also I think you have to think outside the box a little bit more in terms of where they got their influences from, who were they bouncing ideas off?

Because she wasn't in the cafes, she wasn't in the publisher's houses, she wasn't talking to fellow poets in the same way that we associate with other great writers of her era or other eras. And I think it does require a different kind of interpretation. But what do you think?

Maiya: I think you are absolutely right. However, you know, [00:25:00] as a slight contrast to that, I think when we have. As much of Dickinson's work as we do, we can see that she is a very fully fleshed out writer. You know, aside from not having many poetic influences, aside from maybe not having someone to edit and revise her work in terms of a publisher, you can look at her whole body of work and I would highly, highly recommend any listeners to go to Poemanalysis.com and explore the poems that we have on the site because they are so beautiful. similar in so many ways. Because her tone of voice, you can't compare it to anyone else's. I think, you know, you and I, Joe, obviously love literature. We love poetry. So if a Dickinson poem was placed in front of us, we'd probably be able to point it out. She is someone that has clearly, aside from not publishing, refined her voice.

So. I think when it comes to tonality and exploring recurrent themes and things like that, we very much have a right as, explorers of her work to make certain assumptions because she makes it evidently clear throughout the work. My question is really more [00:26:00] so how accurate can we be when we have immeasurable access that we potentially weren't meant to have.

Joe: I think it's really interesting and I think it opens up a real sort of, , Pandora's box about how much authorial intention matters more broadly, I suppose. I mean, I suggest you go and check out the episode of Beyond the Verse we did on William Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, because we talked a lot about him, and he's a really interesting counter example as somebody who was very much a collaborative poet, somebody who worked within a movement.

If we take, for example, his long poem, The Prelude, that was a poem that we know was revised over more than 50 years. We have multiple editions, revisions, etc. How much that matters from a scholarly position, I think if you're just reading as a general reader perhaps you might want to take the most quote up to date version, the poet's final version, but from a scholarly perspective I think there is every It's every bit as valuable to read the early versions as it is to read the final one because you might get a sense of kind of the early beginnings of that work.

And I think it really depends on what kind of relationship you want to [00:27:00] have to the literature. If you're reading for pleasure, if you're reading solely to understand the emotions of the poem, then perhaps it doesn't matter which version you want. Whichever one resonates with you really is the one that's right for you.

I think from a scholarly vantage point The differences the gaps between the versions in many ways is the most interesting thing why did this get added and this get taken away, but you are right with dickinson that While there is, of course, some evidence about which versions came first, because obviously often her diaries were noted, there is a real lack of understanding with regard to what she envisioned as her best work, what she envisioned as the work that she wanted to see in the world.

I mean, something as simple as when poets publish collections, they put poems in a particular order. You know, we don't have that. We don't have a sense of what kind of sequence we're meant to engage with these poems in. I mean, most of the poems don't have proper titles.

For readers who aren't familiar with Emily Dickinson's poems, almost every title that you read of a Dickinson poem is actually just the first line, including this one. Most of her poems also have a numerical title, because we simply don't [00:28:00] know. And the way in which you title a poem, the way in which you order them in a collection, these things change the perception of the poems themselves.

And those are the bits that we really lack with a poet like Dickinson, all of which was decided by other people.

Maiya: You know, it's so interesting you bring up that point because, , obviously there's a certain level where we have a bit of a formula on this podcast and usually when we approach a poem we will start with the title and that will so often frame our understanding of what is meant to be important within the poem. Because we don't have that for Dickinson, it really creates a level of vulnerability that I think makes her work so powerful and so strong because you feel so much more intimately involved with the content you're reading I think this poem, you know, further strips back that vulnerability. Now one of the things Jo and I talked about before recording this episode is actually wanting to owe a certain level of respect to Dickinson because we didn't want to confuse gentleness and softness with the fact that she was a female [00:29:00] writer. And one of the things I'd really like to touch on. Is actually that fourth stanza in this poem.

And I'll just repeat it for listeners. The dews drew quivering and chill For only gossamer my gown, my tippet only tulle. Now the point I'd like to make here is sometimes it's very easy to conflate comfort with gentleness.

Or comfort with softness. Because what this poem does is tell us that the speaker is comfortable with her situation. And this stanza shows it very clearly because for the benefit of listeners who aren't aware. Gossamer and tulle are both Luxurious, lightweight fabrics. They are something that doesn't offer much warmth, much protection.

So when you explore something by contrast to the Jews quivering, you're introducing cold, you're introducing a level of discomfort. But the speaker is so lightly clothed and yet doesn't experience that discomfort, which tells us that she is enduring. a [00:30:00] sense of warmth that the atmosphere isn't necessarily providing.

So comfort is something that is really critical in this poem. And I love the fact that, yes, we can talk about the fact that the way in which Dickinson writes is soft and gentle, but it is also very powerful. It is soft and it is gentle, but it is not a light touch. It is very intentional. it's really important that We don't look at this as a kind of soft touch poem.

It's one that is imbued with meaning, 

Joe: I think that's a fascinating point and I think to view it alongside the broader conversation we're having about Dickinson's work, there is a sense of intimacy, there is a sense of closeness, a sense of vulnerability that I think Dickinson's poetry innately has to readers because there aren't the guardrails that most poets have, there aren't the titles, there aren't the collections, there aren't the editing processes that most poets have to almost protect their work or to shape the way in which it is perceived.

When you read [00:31:00] dickinson's work, you do feel like you're getting access to this private world And I think that creates the actual experience of reading the poems becomes a much more intimate and personal process as a result of that sense of Reading kind of a an unfiltered unadulterated version of an artist's work.

It feels innately more personal

Maiya: Absolutely, and one of the things Jo and I talked about before this podcast was actually that, you know, she is often noted as one of the great American poets. Now, in the literary canon, she stands almost directly next to someone like Walt Whitman, for example. But one of the things I think is particularly interesting about the relationship between the two of them is that Whitman was writing these grand poems aiming to speak on behalf of the whole of America.

He was looking to be that plural American voice. Now what Dickinson is doing is almost the exact opposite. She is solely looking to be a singular, personal voice. And yet Her work has become [00:32:00] so instrumental in defining the American voice, especially as a female poet at the time. So, it's a really fascinating way to explore voice, tone, and intention in American poetry at the time. But, I mean, Jo, do you have any thoughts on that?

Joe: Whitman example is a really good one. I think the other example that comes to my mind is another poet that Maiya and I have discussed, Robert Frost. I think viewing her work in relation to other great American poets and I think those three are often sort of regarded as being, you know, sort of on an island of greatness all their own with regard to American poetry, but to view that solely in retrospect misses the point.

Whitman and Frost. Knew they were great because people told them. Their greatness was assumed during their lifetimes. And in fact, they continued to write work under the assumption of their own greatness. Dickinson did not. Dickinson did not have financially or critically the feedback that this work was going to be regarded as kind of seminal, as canonical as it has [00:33:00] gone on to become.

And I think we'll never know. how Whitman's work would have been different had his greatness not been presumed, or Frost. I mean, Frost won the Pulitzer Prize, I think, four times. You know this when he publishes the fifth collection or the sixth collection it is viewed in relation to the success He's had up to that point and sometimes that can be a hindrance and sometimes it can be positive but I think Trying to understand Dickinson as she would have been writing these poems at the time is really important to us because of the way In which she has become so iconic in the years after her death It's almost hard to strip back those layers in retrospect and remember that this was somebody who had no idea You That her work was going to be as respected as it's gone on to become. I mean, we've just mentioned whitman and frost. We talked about dylan thomas earlier I think that there is a tendency when you have a writer with so many biographical gaps or so much kind of Blankness in dickinson's biography.

There is a tendency to kind of fill in the gaps and I think the way in which her work can be kind [00:34:00] of projected onto the lives of others and Viewing the way in which it intersects with other people is really fascinating 

she feels like a poetic figure that's much older than she was I mean the 19th century is not that long ago as I mentioned I mean

mara and I did an episode on Sappho's the Anactoria poem a few months ago, and I think to view her In relation to someone like Sappho can be really helpful because they almost have kind of an inverse relationship So again for listeners who want to learn more about Sappho, I suggest they go and check out that episode But i'll just quickly summarize.

Sappho was an ancient greek poet of enormous renown hugely respected You know held up alongside the likes of homer as the world's premier poet But less than one percent two percent of her work survives to this day. So you have this kind of Really odd relationship as readers to the greatness of this figure, but the lack of evidence You The lack of poetry, the lack of surviving work.

To view that in contrast to someone like Dickinson, to whom we have huge amounts of material in terms of raw poetry, but very little sense of her [00:35:00] greatness during her life, very little response of contemporaries. I think is really fascinating. But I mean, there are loads of comparisons that work with Dickinson.

We talked again in the previous episode about William Blake's The Tyger. Now, William Blake's collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience, sold absolutely appallingly during his lifetime and only really took off after his death. And I think, you know, those kind of things, the van Goghs of this world are always going to interest people because when we have great artists in retrospect, we always struggle to reconcile the fact that they weren't considered great in their time.

And I mean, I don't know, Maiya, are there any other writers or poets that You know you think of when we talk about dickinson that you find there are parallels with their experience

Maiya: Well, perhaps not another poet, but it does bring me back to what I truly believe is maybe the central core of this poem, which is Psalm 23 from the Bible. Now in Psalm 23, we have this image of walking through the valley with the shadow of death.

This passage is one of the few times in the Bible where death has a physical presence. [00:36:00] And yet, in the Bible, death is not personified in the same way that it is in this poem.

It is given a certain level of darkness. It is the shadow. It is something that is slightly more ominous, something that follows, something that overshadows. In this poem, however, death is given a lightness and a brightness. Even the description of the setting is the setting sun. , the light is still there. Yes, it is going down. Yes, it is reducing, but they are still in almost the afterglow. The speaker and death and this journey are taking place really in What now I think we would call the golden hour, but the afterglow of this beautiful sunset.

So I think the portrayals are, you know, sensitive to religion, but maybe not really following at least the broader brushstrokes of it. So Dickinson's portrayal of death as something that has form and substance is one that I think really sits at odds to that sort of Protestant Christian mentality that is [00:37:00] so popular in her era. 

Joe: It's a really interesting comparison and I think the thing that really stands out to me Is that that passage if we just continue though? I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I shall fear no evil for god is with me Death is something that the speaker requires protection against and comfort against whereas in Dickinson's poem The presence of death is almost a comforting presence in its own, right?

And again We mentioned this earlier But the way in which she is able to hold the pagan the pre christian and the Christian in tandem without sort of Feeling contradictory is one of the great skills of this poem. I think

Maiya: and I guess that's the key word of this poem really, isn't it? Is comfort. Because I think we tend to fall into a trap a little bit with Dickinson in the way that she is quite soft, in assuming that that maybe doesn't have many layers, but actually she takes some really tough images and manages to add so much depth to them, and. The one that is always so powerful for me is that, penultimate [00:38:00] stanza. I'm just going to re read it for the benefit of listeners. We paused before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground. The roof was scarcely visible, the cornice in the ground. Now, I mentioned this earlier, this is often taken to be a grave or a resting place, but what's really important to me is that she does not use those words. She doesn't use grave. Tomb, coffin, none of those more negatively associated elements of death. She uses a house. Now for someone that spent so much time in her own house, in her own room, that found comfort in those four walls, I think it's a really beautiful image that her final resting place really mimics the point at which she was most comfortable in her life. And I say final resting place advisedly because obviously we understand that the speaker in the poem is watching this place and not necessarily there yet. But the fact that the ground has risen up around this house, it has become part of the [00:39:00] nature around it, just further adds to that image that Dickinson is trying to portray that death is natural and it is a journey and it is something to her that she can find comfort in still. But what do you think, Jo?

Joe: I agree completely, and you mentioned, you know, the word gentleness and the word comfort, and I've used the word subtlety quite a few times in this episode, and I think Oftentimes we miss how radical she can be as a poet.

I mean the insinuation here is that If the soul never progresses beyond this point, which you know, let's describe what it is. It's a hole in the ground I mean, she dresses it up in a very comforting way, but The decision to do so suggests that if the soul never moves beyond this place that she is okay with that You And again, I can't stress enough that might not seem particularly radical to a kind of A more secular modern readership, but the idea that in a deeply religious context That sense of the soul never reaching judgment never having to be sent along these [00:40:00] binary lines to either heaven or hell And for that to be okay is deeply radical and Really quite moving.

I think there is a sense of acceptance, a sense of humility in the face of things that we can't control and cannot truly know that I think comes across in a really gentle, subtle way, as I've mentioned, but it is actually deeply powerful.

Maiya: And Dickinson is one of those poets that is so vastly concerned with interiority. I mean, I just want to briefly touch on one of her other poems, One Need Not Be A Chamber To Be Haunted, which opens, One need not be a chamber to be haunted. One need not be a house.

The brain has corridors surpassing material place. Far safer of a midnight meeting external ghost than an interior confronting that whiter host. I really just find with Emily Dickinson's poems that there is a hugely fleshed out sense of self. And that is the core of pretty much every poem I read.

She is someone that spends so much time with [00:41:00] herself and on herself that you can start to understand where these common threads come through the poems. And you can really see that perhaps unlike some of the other poets That we investigate, that revise and edit. She sees almost the internal workings of her brain as that editing machine, so I, I love the idea that maybe these poems are viewed by us as more fully formed because she has already done the work but perhaps just not on the page.

Joe: Definitely. And we mentioned earlier about how she's not a poet that existed in conventional artistic circles alongside fellow writers in a particular literary movement. We've spoken in previous episodes about how important those relationships can be for writers, but Dickinson is a really unique example of somebody who perhaps Withdrawn from those circles without those influences.

We might even regard those influences actually to be distractions She creates a more singular a more coherent and a more deeply [00:42:00] introspective poetic style That perhaps she wouldn't have done were she being pulled in different directions by different editors and fellow poets we could talk about that poem and dickinson's others for many more hours, I'm sure, but if readers and listeners are not satisfied with that, they can go to poemanalysis.com and read literally hundreds of Dickinson's poems with brilliant analysis on the website.

Next week, Maiya and I are going to be closing out season one of Beyond the Verse by talking about Chinua Achebe's love cycle. I cannot wait for that conversation and. We should just let you know that season two will be returning in early 2025 But if you've enjoyed beyond the verse season one so far We would implore you to go to wherever you get your podcast and like rate and review and of course Recommend the podcast to friends family and future poetry lovers.

But for now, it's goodbye from me

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at Poemanalysis.com. Until next time!