Emily dickinsons nature poems Essay

Emily Dickinsons use of record imagery in her poetry incorporates elements of both romanticism and realism. These usually contrasting pecks allow Dickinson to chatter a prevarication of information, a duplicity which can be considered as a part of nature itself, as expressed through gentle consciousness. Although the overall impact of Dickinsons nature imagery is romantic and reveals acquaintance of nature as a mode of transcendence, the imagery and style of Dickinsons poems also establish a convincing realist tone, which separates her work from strictly transcendentalist nature-poets such(prenominal) as Emerson or Thoreau.It is not difficult to pinpoint individual poems by Dickinson where nature starts as an obvious transcendent force. Her poem 214 I sagacity a Liquor Never Brewed (Perkins, 990) utilizes an obvious metaphorical dynamic the loud vocalizer of the poem is drunk on elements of nature Inebriate of Air am I / And Debauchee of Dew (Perkins, 990) and the exube rance of the loudspeaker system is meant to be both amusing and extreme.The poem strikes a queer tone, due to Dickinsons belief that the comic or humorous is no less serious than the tragic (Eberwein 150) and in her mind, the depths of human existence could never be climbed, would never be plumbed, without a humorous attenuation to the world (Eberwein 150). The humor in poem 214 is meant to emerge from the caustic remark of a speaker blatantly celebrating their drunkeness. Despite the poems comical overtones, the theme of the poem is, in fact, quite serious. The poems theme is that nature is a gate through which ecstacy is reached.The true irony of the poem is that liquor is superfluous to true ecstacy all that is needed is nature itself. In this authority, Dickinson is casting a criticism on her societys reliance on artificial stimulants. Nature will endure where actual liquor runs dry When Landlords turn the drunken Bee/Out of the Foxgloves door /When Butterflies forswear their drams / I shall but drink the more (Perkins, 990) The seriousness of the poems theme is in the implied isolation of the speaker, who is acknowledged only by the Seraphs and Saints (Perkins, 990) who bring in the little Tippler / Leaning against the Sun - (Perkins, 990).It is impossible to escape the pure tone that Leaning against the Sun (Perkins, 990) is a dangerous position even fro an rapturous poet so while the poem demonstrates transcendence, it also expresses isolation and alienation. By contrast, Dickinsons poem 328, A Bird came down the Walk (Perkins, 995) begins with a esthesis of alienation and rigid realistic description and opens toward the end to a transcendentalist vision of nature. The beginning line describe how a bid hopped on the speakers walk and bit an Angleworm in halves (Perkins, 995).The poets note that the bird ate the fellow, raw, (Perkins, 995) suggests anything but a transcendental vision of nature. rather, the nip evokes a stark, biologic ally precise depiction of natural processes. Nevertheless, a duplicity of perception is hinted at in the sideline lines And then he drank a Dew /From a convenient Grass / And then hopped sidewise to the Wall/ To allow a Beetle pass (Perkins, 995) where the previously predatory scene gives way to one of civility and calm.The duplicity of perception is extended by the develop Like one in danger, Cautious (Perkins, 995) which may modify both the preceding He stirred his Velvet Head or the following I offered him a Crumb, hence either the bird or the speaker or both (Eberwein 85) and, as such, admits an ambiguity into the poems vocabulary which is foreshadowed by the imagery.This ambiguity is not quite resolved, but merely sour toward an image of transcendent nature in the poems settlement lines Too silver for a seam /Or Butterflies, off Banks of twelve noon/ Leap, plashless as they swim (Perkins, 995). Whereas poem 214 began with a blatant expression of excite transcendence a nd ended with an ambiguity of isolation and alienation, poem 328 begins with a intelligence of alienation and even violence,but resolves in a harmonious, transcendental uplift of diction and imagery.Obviously, Dickinson aim in her poetry was to represent the duality of human perception and the duality of the natural world which can be resolved in aesthetic expression, but not by methods based solely on rationalism or realism.Works CitedEberwein, Jane Donahue, ed. An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia. Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 1998. Perkins, George Perkins, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature 11th Edition 2007