Considering Emily: Poetry and the Spirit

Poetry has the ability to evoke and invoke the spirit.  Emily Dickinson said to her friend Higginson:  "If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it."  A poem becomes vivid and strong when it is grounded in the body:

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port, --
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart!


Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in Thee!

An ambiguity exists in this poem that allows it to cast more than one shadow. Mary Oliver has identified the ability to cast more than one shadow, to make multiple meanings, a characteristic of good poetry. The one to whom the poem is addressed is obscure, it could be a mortal or it could be an immortal.  In this ambiguity, the subject which could have very straightforward becomes figurative, becomes a metaphor.  The poet gains additional meanings.  Besides this, Emily Dickinson makes very effective use of repetition, rhyme, consonance and assonance (consonant and vowel sounds). Paul Valery says the difference between poetry and prose is physiological. The poem attends to meter, measure, and breath. "Wild Nights" has a definite, compact form. It's based on the liturgy, or the hymn stanza.  Emily Dickinson's work is distinctive and entirely her own--it reflects her individuality.

In addition, a good poem uses the visible image to give a glimpse of the invisible. She invokes.  In another poem, Emily Dickinson has made this quite clear and indisputable: