I agree that Dickinson’s poetry is both fascinating and disturbing, that is what makes her

such a renowned poet. Dickinson describes the emotions she feels in great detail,
sometimes disturbing detail. The themes of her poems are generally quite sinister while
occasionally they are also bright and cheerful, which may be due to Dickinson’s ‘Seasonal
Affective Disorder’. Her disorder is reflected in her poetry and will be a recurring theme
throughout. I think the way Dickinson writes causes this mixed feeling of disturbance and
delight as it truly captures what someone experiencing so many emotions sees and feels.
Dickinson propels us into her world, seen through her eyes, filled with tears of good or bad.
That, she leaves up to the reader to decide.

Dickinson, after her difficult upbringing, settles her dispute with the church through her
poetry. As she writes her poem, ‘A certain slant of light’, we see how Dickinson has been
hurt by the church and her emotions toward it. It may seem disturbing how she can rant,
subtly, about something believed in by so many but this in-turn is also what is so fascinating
and thought provoking. She writes about the ‘scars’ and ‘internal difference’ that she was left
with which are invisible to the outside. Dickinson infers that the church ‘oppresses’ her like
the ‘Winter afternoons’ which we know cause her great sadness, due to her disorder. I think
how Dickinson compares this to a ‘certain slant of light’ is use of effective imagery as it
implies that only seen through a certain set of eyes, can you see the dark side of the church
and the despair it causes. The oppression the church caused upon her, she conveys with
her use of dark language, imagery and theme of light which is supposed to convey hope, but
not this ‘certain slant’. I think this poem causes so much delight as she is open to speak
about this problem and doesn’t hold back at all. She is expressive with her description,
putting the reader in her shoes once again.

After her difficult upbringing, mental health was a continuous struggle for Dickinson. In her
poem ‘I felt a funeral in my brain’, she, once again in disturbing detail, talks about her
journey of losing sanity and control over her consciousness. Dickinson describes the
‘mourners’, the monotonous service of her funeral beating like a ‘drum’ and how her mind
eventually went ‘numb’. These things represent Dickinson’s slow, painful loss of sanity and
how even the closest people to her couldn’t help her. It was irreversible. In the last stanza
Dickinson uses language which we see in some of her other poems as well, the reference to
a ship and the sea. Dickinson makes this connection as it represents the vast emptiness and
loneliness of being out at sea, the overwhelming feeling of being submerged in water and
the helplessness of both. This metaphor is one that links naturally caused pain without an
escape. Although the theme of this poem is again sad and full of despair, delight is found as
people can relate and understand how Dickinson was feeling, on an island and alone.

Continuing her theme of depression and despair, Dickinson also wrote ‘I heard a fly buzz
when I died’. This poem finishes Dickinson’s life of misery in what was planned to be a
peaceful death finally rid of the endless pain. She writes about the ‘stillness’ in the room and
the air, the firm breaths and the ‘blue - uncertain - stumbling’ bee. Dickinson’s use of these
many adjectives to highlight the calm side of death, with her family by her side, makes it
seem as though her death is exactly what she had hoped for. This is then interrupted by the
‘buzz’ of the ‘interposed fly’ making Dickinson’s only chance at a peaceful death
unsuccessful. The seemingly drunk bee has no regard for Dickinson’s mourn for peace that
it has broken. Her interrupted death reflects her life, ridden with failed plans and unfortunate
situations interrupted by the universe. I think the theme of this poem varys from the theme of
despair and depression slightly as Dickinson is implying that even when interrupted and
even when things happen that don’t go according to plan, life goes on, or in her case
doesn’t.

As we see Dickinson’s depression linked to winter we also see the happiness and hope she
gets from the sun of summer. In her poem ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’ we see Dickinson
joyful, in a trance of song for the first time. As she creates a metaphor of drunkenness on
nature’s beauty she describes the ‘inns of molten blue’, the butterflies and the ‘drunken bee’
which are all, like her, drunk on the happiness of summertime and the warm sun. Dickinson’s
language and tune of this poem effectively express how summer makes her feel and what
she loves to see and hear. As the theme of this poem is of happiness and joy it is much
more uplifting and less disturbing than the other poems we have seen. Dickinson however,
still links this emotion of happiness to being drunk and finite through that. Being drunk is a
form of delusion of reality, which is what she is linking this to inferring that this is a fake
feeling which can only be felt in summer or what Dickinson describes as being drunk. I find
this quite disturbing although it is a beautiful image that she is describing because she is
inferring that she cannot feel true happiness and rather only by being intoxicated on ‘endless
summer days’.

Finally we see another poem of hope which tells us more about Dickinson’s feelings towards
her past and her moving on from it. Her poem ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ implies the
presence of a bird symbolising hope and freedom which ‘perches in the soul’ and keeps her
resilient through all the hardship she has been through. She describes the ‘tune’ it sings
which is heard ‘sweetest - in the gale’ and how the storm must be very bad to ‘abash the
little bird’. These metaphors are all pointing to this little bird representing hope, which has
helped Dickinson through so many tough times and even then has never ‘asked a crumb - of
[her]’. It causes great delight in readers to see such a deep image and feeling be described
so accurately and being one of few poems by Dickinson to contain very little disturbing
imagery. Obviously the theme of this poem is hope but this is more meaningful to Dickinson
as we can see later on in the poem as she describes how she ‘heard it in the chillest land
and on the strangest sea’. Dickinson was very lonely and felt deserted in a barren emptiness
represented in these lines by the sea and chillest, deserted land.

Dickinson’s life let alone poems are filled with dramatic comparisons and contrasts between
happy and sad which are directly linked to summer and winter. As she struggled a lot
throughout her life she has many images and emotions to describe in her poems which
seem disturbing to us as readers but to her were just life. Dickinson’s themes are very
bipolar in her writing as she either describes the best or worst situations she has
encountered through dramatic comparison and description. Without a lot of happiness in her
life, Dickinson seems to have learned and matured early on making her early life and
therefore rest of her life seem empty of fun and joy except the mere few months of summer
where everything aligned and she was happy as can be. This contrast is very obviously
reflected in her poetry and contributes to the wonderful poetry we have left of her today.

As we have seen Dickinson’s use of language and theme to create a disturbing yet
fascinating atmosphere in her poems is very effective and intriguing. Although disturbing as
sometimes it is too descriptive, overall her writing and description of her experiences is
delightful to all readers and makes for poetry to be enjoyed many decades after her death.