Death is a Dialogue between

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death,
The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust"--

Death doubts it--
Argues from the Ground--
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.
(F 973)

Much of Dickinson's poetry casts the religion of Amherst and her family into doubt. She never made peace with the Christian view of her family, although through her poetry she struggles time and time again with issues of faith and belief. Specific answers as to what Dickinson believed or put her faith in is unknown-- she took that secret to the grave with her. It does seem, through her poetry, that she did believe in an afterlife or some existence beyond death. She also has a firm trust in the idea that people consist of body and soul and that the soul is eternal.

This poem is one of the closer hints that readers have at a profession of belief or assurance of some sort of faith. It's mystical, unclear and sort of like a statement a deist or even agnostic might make. If Dickinsons belongs in any specific "belief" category I would be tempted to put her in the "agnostic" column, because she seems to think that God might exist but really doubts that a personal relationship with him is possible.

All that aside, the speaker's description of the "overcoat of clay" and shedding that coat for a "another trust" is one of the most beautiful metaphors for the end of mortality and the eternal state of the soul found in poetry. Interestingly enough, death is never fearful or the winner in Dickinson's poetry. Death is personified as a gentleman at times, sneaky and sometimes even spiteful. But death never wins in Dickinson's poetry. Memory and the eternity of the soul always trump death.

I taste a liquor never brewed

I taste a liquor never brewed--
From Tankards scooped in Pearl--
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air-- am I--
And Debauchee of Dew--
Reeling-- thro' endless summer days--
From inns of molten Blue--

When "Landlords" turn the drunken bee
Out of the Foxglove's door--
Whe Butterflies-- renounce their "drams"--
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats--
And Saints-- to windows run--
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the-- Sun!
(F 207)

This poem is often mistaken as one of Dickinson's nice little poems about nature, lauding the joy and finding inebriation and sheer pleasure in the sky and the spring. Worse yet, it is often taken as a sort of transcendentalist approach, one of the few times Dickinson's work is ever supposedly meshed with the likes of Emerson or Whitman.

What a close reading of this poem reveals, however, is the exact opposite. Dickinson rejects the transcendentalist idea of embracing nature and becoming one with it and with all life. There is no union with a higher power and transformation through union. This "drunken" speaker takes in the liquor of the skies and the air, when he or she passes by the bee drunk on pollen, it is not enough. There is none of the transcedentalist "urge to merge" as Dr Smokewood would call it. Because all of the natural world the speaker has taken in is not enough, and at the end of the third stanza the speaker still is not sated.

Resting and peace for the speaker comes only in this final stanza when he or she rests against the sun, but in that moment the persona has not found unity. Rather, the angels have rushed to the sides of heaven and are overcome with the need to see the speaker for themselves. The speaker has effectively upset the balance of man and deity, completely distracting even the angels from the glory of God and taking it upon himself or herself. There is not a deification of man through union with God, but rather a side-step of God. In the end, the drunkeness is with power and influence and recognition. It will remain possibly insatiable. There are the parable elements here of an unexpected reversal or the subversion of stereotypes-- the nature transcendence poem veers sharply from the expected route. And the conclusion is left open. The reader does not know what happens next-- if the recognition of the angels is enough or if more is required.

There's a certain Slant of light

One of Dickinson's great gifts in writing poetry is her ability to find language to recreate an experience for the reader. Through word choice and metaphor she creates not merely a description of emotion and the human condition, but she forces the reader to remember-- very literally the reader re-members. Breaking down remember to its elements: "re", as in doing again like repeating or retrail; combined with "member" or actively involving in something. Thus, the audience is transported from reader to actor as Dickinson uses words to cause the audience to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the very core of emotions-- often at their most raw:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference--
Where the Meanings, are--

None may teach it-- Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent of us the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows-- hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death
(F 320)

Through this poem, Dickinson creates the experience of depression (and argueably of Seasonal Affective Disorder). She uses strong verbs like "oppresses" and nouns like 'heft", "hurt", "scar" "Despair" and "affliction" to create a stark picture of the soul-wearying, exhausting trial of depression. In this case, the depression renders the speaker incapacitated, which Dickinson describes through synesthesia in the first stanza: "There's a certain slant of light, / ... That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes" (1, 3-4). This is yet another example of Dickinson's skill in bending language as mere light, ironically which one would expect to be physically light or not wearying, oppresses like the weight of a pipe organ, or the "Cathedral Tunes". Dickinson blends nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs through metaphor into a super-charged metaphor of crushing power, and all this in just the first stanza.

I'll probably take up this poem again later, too. I know I'm saying that a lot, but I will get back to it.

A Letter is a joy of Earth

A Letter is a joy of Earth--
It is denied the Gods--
(F 1672)

This tiny poem might very well have come out of a letter, and is typical of the statements Dickinson often made-- gnomic thoughts compressed tightly into a single sentence. I love when she comes up with these seemingly simplistic statements. Anyone might thing "A letter is a joy of earth," because most people really do enjoy getting mail. I think at times that Dickinson would like instant messaging, because not only does it retain some anonymity but it also thrives on the sharp, witty intellect that she possessed. And yet instant messaging has both destroyed and enhanced the art of letter writing. I say destroyed because so few students really know how to draft a formal letter, and few see the value in such a slow form of communication in our technologically advanced society. And yet techology has enhanced letters in the sense that a note in paper means even more and receiving one shows great consideration.

Going more directly back to the poem, though, few people except Dickinson would add on the afterthought: "it is denied the gods." I'm still researching to make sure my grasp of grammar is correct, but if this is a compound sentence (and really even if it's not and it could go either way with Dickinson), then the second line could arguably serve as a nominative clause, renaming "joy" in the first line.

Ironically, the gods who ought to have access to everything are denied one thing-- the joy of letters. It's the unexpected reversal found so often in Dickinson, where the reader would assume gods have access to all, only to realize that while a god might receive a letter, it is unlike that it would happen. And if the god was omniscient, as Christian tradition maintains God is, then the letter really isn't much of a joy. As humans we have expectation or anticipation while we wait for a letter to arrive. There is the sudden surprise-joy of an unexpected letter, but still the anticipation is there when we see the envelope and wonder even for a few seconds before opening what could be inside. The omniscient god would already have foreknowledge, thus making the letter mundane or expected.

Arguably, the Christian response to this could be that even if God is already aware of letters or communication, the very act of communication is a joy to him. It makes me wonder how Dickinson might have responded to this defense.