Jessica Ramirez’s CS for April 1st

The poems for today were very interesting, and I found myself drawn to some of the poems Dickinson wrote about death, specifically poems 479 and 528.

Poem 479 “Because I could not stop for Death-” continues a trend that I have noticed in ED’s work whenever she talks about death. Whenever she characterizes death she often presents him as a neutral figure and in this poem, she still presents death as kinder than the audience would expect

Because I could not stop for Death-

He kindly stopped for me-

The Carriage held but just Ourselves-

And Immortality.

Describing an action from death as “kindly” is interesting especially with how her tone implies that death taking her is not a bad thing and that she has some agency in being taken by death. The poem feels calm as it presents what could be seen as the narrator’s last moments before death and some form of implied “Eternity”. It makes me wonder if ED is exploring how death is a transition to a much longer existence. It’s interesting to me because this interpretation of death is not the kind that is often ascribed in bible scripture.

Its also notable how the last things that the narrator visits with death are a school, a field and a sunset. I suppose in a literal sense they could be the last things the narrator saw before they died, but it is an odd set of places. This imagery evokes some form of innocence to me and I wonder if it is meant to give this transition a calming feeling as though death is not an upsetting transition. Or perhaps this is meant to represent the narrator going through memories with death before finally passing away.

I will admit however that the 2nd to last stanza is confusing, I’m not sure what the house is meant to represent. The way Dickinson describes the house it is close to the ground, maybe buried, and is the last place the poem shows us. I wonder if it represents the final place before fully transitioning to death or if it represents in some way the grave of the narrator given that the house is mostly underground and is described as a “Swelling of the Ground”

Poem 528 is one that I was already familiar with given that we already saw it in one of the letters from a few weeks ago. It is interesting how Dickinson presents death from different perspectives, many of her poems deal with the feeling or moments of dying, but this poem deals with how death affects someone who has experienced loss. Throughout the poem, she implies that death is at least neutral or potentially good. I say this because she writes “But Dying- is a different way- / A kind behind the Door-” which implies that there is some comfort in death that the narrator does not receive.

This poem seems to reflect some of the emotional aspects of death from Dickinson’s perspective as she ascribes herself as a bird left behind during the winter while the others leave. It’s interesting because she aligns living without someone as cold and painful while the other birds move on to a nicer climate. Perhaps it provides comfort knowing that death is not difficult for the person going through it or maybe it’s meant to emphasize how we often view death from an external perspective and all we know is how we feel when someone passes away.

These two poems create very different tones for the effects of death and how it feels depending on the perspective, and its interesting to see when she describes the death of herself/the narrator compared to how she writes about witnessing death.