The Poetry of Emily Dickinson and its Effective Message

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Literary Criticism: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was among the greatest American poets that ever lived. Born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, she later attended Amherst Academy where she studied for seven years. Her family and friends knew her as a reserved and quiet person who hardly made social interactions. In some cases, she spent most of her time behind the closed doors of her bedroom writing her poems and hardly even greeted visitors. Her younger sister, Lavinia, was the first person to discover Emily's amazing talent in poetry and it is through her that the public knew about Emily's work. As such, almost 1800 of her poems were published when she was alive (Keane 1). Emily Dickinson, also known as the woman in white, provided a stepping-stone for all poets who followed later and even had the Emily Dickinson Museum built in her honor. One of the thousands of poems that she wrote was ‘A Bee His Burnished Carriage' and the following essay will analyse that particular piece and its effective message. The paper will also criticize the poetic piece selected. Emily Dickinson's ‘A Bee His Burnished Carriage' has various elements such as intensity and rhythm that makes it a good poem.
Emily Dickinson based most of her poems on religion and culture. During her time, religious beliefs were more to satisfy man's selfish nature and as such, faith was wearing thin. People believed that salvation was limited to certain people and God granted it to those He deemed fit. Emily often wondered about life after death and questioned about what happened to the soul once a person died. However, her answers were well beyond her reach and understanding since every religion claimed to have an answer (Keane 12). All these questions and more formed the basis of her ideologies and creativity for her poems. Critics term her ideas as introspective. Despite the fact that she hardly went to church, her poems revolved around life, death, salvation, mortality, and immortality. Various elements denote a good poem. One includes formality, which refers to the shape and design of the poem. The structure of the poem must be in simple manner without too much going on to distract the reader. ‘A Bee His Burnished Carriage' is a 12-sentence poem where Emily arranges them one below the other (Dickinson and Vendle 20).
A good poem must have rhythm. All or some of the words at the end of the sentence must sound alike. In the selected piece, the word ‘tranquillity' rhymes with ‘cupidity' and ‘humility'. The complexity of the poem allows for the discovery of new things and ideas and as such, provides room for critics to analyse and debate about it. In addition, it makes the poem more mysterious and intriguing. Another element of a good poem is that it has to be concrete by focusing on realistic situations in the society so that the readers may identify themselves with it. In the mentioned poem, Emily talks about the feminism issue that was present during her time. The poem expresses the shame in sexual expression by a woman. As such, this poem is significant in that it has a message and it is not just ...