I liked Emily Dickinson more than John Donne, but poems tend to confuse me in general. They are so hard to understand what the author is truly trying to say. For example, in class we talk about the Emily’s poems and write what we think it means. However, when we were told what she was really trying to say it was a different opinion. Emily’s poem, “Wild Nights” I understood what the meaning of the story was. This poem was talking about making love to someone, but in reality the reader needs to go into more depth than that to understand what the meaning of writing something like this means. After reading this poem you have to think deeper, as to: who the speaker is, why did they do it, was it only one Wild Night? As we read more poems on Dickinson I begin to think that she is just not right in the head. Her poems range from sex to death to just being happy. Most of the time author’s have a certain theme in all the poems they write. I can see where Emily may have developed the unusual characteristics from. She never left her house, then went off to college for a year, and then came home and stayed in her room. This woman had some issues and was probably bored and frustrated that she never did anything in her life. Later on her poems would be published, but most were after her death. I believe that she just wanted to write as many poems as she could and in all genres so that at least one would get published and she would leave her name with a legacy, since her life was lacking.
I agree with you. I do not understand poetry either and each person has a different perspective of it. Like we talked about in class, Emily was crazy. What I do not understand is why she just writes about all of this stuff instead of staying in her room and not going out and experiencing it first hand. I think that the reason she wrote about all of these different things is because she was too shy or weird to go out and experience all of these things personally she just lost herself in her writing. Her writing is what she really wanted to do. It took her to the place that she wanted to be at.
I also agree that everyone has a different perspective or opinion on what the poem actually means. I also wonder why Emily just stayed in her bedroom all of her life. If she writes about all this stuff in life, why not go out and experience it herself? I felt lie one reason that she wrote all of these poems was because she had nothing else to do. She sat in her room all day, and enjoyed writing poetry so she wrote poems. With all that time on her hands and nothing else to do, she wrote poetry. Apparently she was pretty good at it too, because we still have a hard time understanding her poems.
Yes, I think you touch on the fact that Emily Dickinson has many more themes other than death and isolation; however, those certainly seem to be most prominent.