Dickinson and Death

Emily Dickinson was an American poet living in Massachusetts in the mid-1800s. Her poems have an intensity and stark honesty to them, which I find soul-stirring. Out of her almost 1,800 poems, over 500 of them explore the subject of death, while much of her poetry wrestles between the religious fervor and hypocrisy of her time and her own personal feelings of longing and doubt. A sorrow haunts most of her works, and I see her as someone who never stopped questioning.

She was intimate with grief. She lost close friends and family members over the course of her life; but she also knew the loss of personal freedom, loneliness and being unknowable. More than anything, her thirst for liberty to think and decide for herself, and her rejection of religion, made her a strange and dangerous friend to have. Certainly, her reclusiveness could have been her way of protecting herself from the censure and rejection of others.

Much of this is conjecture on my part. I’m no Dickinson scholar. But I’ve read and enjoy her poetry and would be pleased to know whether you are familiar with her works as well.

Because of her insightful thoughts on death and dying, grief and loss, I’ve chosen 28 poems by Emily Dickinson as epitaphs for “A Voracious Grief”.

I appreciate how Dickinson speaks of grief in terms both emotional and reasonable. She explores the meaning of pain while struggling to survive it. Her thoughts on life and the purpose of living through sorrow and loss are a refreshing struggle between her longing for hope and her acknowledgement of despair.

Let me just quote a few of my favorite lines; I hope they’ll stir your anticipation for the deep themes I’ll be delving into through my books.

1.

“There is a Langour of the Life

More imminent than Pain —

‘Tis Pain’s Successor — When the Soul

Has suffered all it can—”

2.

“Each that we lose takes part of us;

A crescent still abides,

Which like the moon, some turbid night,

Is summoned by the tides”

3.

“I can wade Grief -

Whole pools of it-

I’m used to that-

But the least push of Joy-

Breaks up my feet-”