Symbolic Images: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson Essay -- essays researc

The poetry of the Imagists is short, simple, and quite literal in its meaning in society to create a vivid picture in the readers mind. When they describe an object, it means just what they say. A tree is a tree, a vizor is a flower, and a bird is a bird. Imagists have little use for abstract words or desires, and tend to shy away from them as very much as possible. Emily Dickinson doesnt fall under the same category as the Imagists, as she doesnt use the same techniques as the Imagists.Dickinsons poems center on very vivid images, with very different takes on them. They very often contain abstract concepts, which are often given concrete principles and are incorporated as part of her images. She implants deeper meanings behind her images, and tends to rely on a different technique than the Imagists. The majority of her work relies firmly on a different fount of imagery symbolism.One of the poems where this symbolism is most evident is My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun. This poe m is obviously based around a strong metaphoric image, as Dickinson is comparing herself to a gun belonging to someone else. In the poem, she uses the gun as a symbol to show her role in the antique society she lived in. The first stanza shows this feelingMy Life had stood a Loaded Gun In Corners till a DayThe Owner passed identified And carried me away In this stanza, Dickinson never explicitly mentions the owner to be a man, only if as women didnt use guns in those times, it is understood that the owner would be male, which she does clarify ulterior in the poem. Even without an outright declaration of male ownership, these lines imply the role that women were supposed to take in Dickinsons time, sitting silently in the dry land until a man wishes to take them away. In the last stanza of the poem, Dickinson echoes the same theme of needing a man to access her power.Though I than He may weeklong liveHe longer must than I For I have but the power to kill, Without the power to die These lines tell of Dickinsons feeling of dependence... ...ase of the speaker units reality, her sense of reason, was faulty and gave way, showing her much more beyond her reason that she could now be aware of. She now holds a new idea of reason and common sense to replace her old ideas. The use of the word I in the second line shows us that inside the coffin is in fact the speaker of the poem. This stanza suggests that the person being buried is perhaps the speakers innocence. It tells us that with the death of her naivety, she falls into a whole new assign of worlds that she didnt know about previously. After her fall, she now has a new grasp of reality and knows more than she had before.Emily Dickinson loved to use images. Her poems are all heavily based around images, and she has an amazing talent for describing them. Each of these poems contains a different theme, and revolved around different images. While each of these poems would stand up on its own, Dickinson tie d many of them together with her tendency to come back to symbolism. Like the Imagists after her, she liked to paint pictures in the readers mind with her words, but what made her stand out was the deeper meaning she laid beyond those images.