I really liked the poems for today’s reading! I feel like they had a lot of common themes that we’ve seen before for Dickinson, Death, Religion, Life, and Nature, but there were a few poems that really stood out for me. I really liked her poems in the beginning where she touched a lot on pain and death (I know how edgy of me) and I feel like there’s a lot to be said about her views on both topics and how they are intertwined. How did she come to have these views? Was there something going on in her life at the time she wrote these that would cause her to feel this way?

339 and 340 both touch on pain and agony with different responses to it. 339 focuses on how agony proves your alive and it can’t lie. If someones in pain then they are still alive and can feel something, and whatever that pain is, is truthful. Death is similar to agony in that way, nothing about death can be faked. In the poem 340, its less about how truthful pain or death is, but about reactions to it. In poem 339, Dickinson states that feeling agony means your alive, which could be taken to mean that not feeling anything means you are dead. Poem 340 talks about a funeral, and it follows the author through a funeral and their reactions to death. The narrator describes that their mind was going numb, which could be equated to a sort of death from the earlier poem when comparing them. The poem also ends on a hyphen right after a then. This could very easily be someones story being cut short, the person in the coffin, and their relationship with the narrator.

My favorite poem by far though is poem 347. This feels a bit like a poem about depression. The narrator couldn’t bear spring to come, wishes the grass would hurry and hide them from view, wishes that the bee’s would stay away so they would not have to talk, dares not to go near daffodils for fear of being stained by a foreign color, and so on. When you’re depressed and feel so numb, and the world around you doesn’t reflect that, it can exacerbate the feeling. when everything’s cheery and your not, it results in a disconnect from yourself and the world. Her not wanting to meet the daffodils, for fear of the yellow, a color usually associated with happiness, and stating how it would be a foreign fashion, reflects her mindset here. She’s sad and doesn’t want to have to look happy. This logic follows for the rest of the examples here, not wanting to be seen, so hoping the grasses grow and cover her, not wanting to have to talk to people, so she hopes the bee’s (other people) stay away. At the end though, it changes to a somewhat more hopeful note. Dickinson writes that spring arrived anyways, in a gentle deference to her, and each one quietly acknowledges her in her sadness, and through that, her “childish plumes” lift as well. I think it’s a very insightful take on how wallowing feels easier but eventually, if you surround yourself with understanding, gentle, happiness, it will wear off on you. And eventually, that feeling will shrink.

Another poem I really enjoyed analyzing for this class was 348 (I know, I liked a lot of the first poems, give me a break)! This poem, to me, seemed to talk about how Dickinson wants to be viewed as a work of art, through her poetry. She wants to invoke thought and emotion and be known for that. She wants to be treated as something to be marveled at and talked about, but not too. She wants others to form their own opinions on her poems and talk about them.

As said, I really enjoyed all poems in this section but these four, even though they were the first, were my favorite. Other notable poems I liked though that I do just have to mention are 353, 355, 413, and 446! And as a personal aside, poem 373 holds a special spot for me. When reading it, I’m not sure why but I was really reminded of the Minecraft poem. It seems about being celebrating humans as a whole and all we can do and learn. How humans will always want more and have a spirit. Just a nice aside!