Understanding Dickinson

      The class discussion on Emily Dickinson's poems today, 1/26, opened up my eyes so as to see what others see when they read her poetry. Dark and ominous are two words I would certainly seek to describe her works, especially on the three we focused on in class. All pertaining to death, we decided, and we all had a unique viewpoint on what kind of story she was trying to tell.
      Interesting enough, my last blog post mentioned poem 764 which is the poem my group and I tried to decipher in class today, coincidentally. It was an eye-opening experience discussing and digesting the poem together because her poems really create a sense of uneasiness, mixed with a dreary feeling upon reading them. As we discussed and dissected, we decided almost immediately that Dickinson was personifying an inanimate object, in this case, a loaded gun which she so boldly starts the poem by adopting the character of the gun in the first line. What I failed to notice the first time reading through and digging to find meaning was the fourth stanza where she mentions what the gun does at night, which adds even more personification as it provides variation in relation to time, which is a human trait. I think this is where the poem really comes together and gives the reader a sense of solidarity and a means to understand the speaker, the gun. It reads, "And when at Night - Our good Day done - / I guard My Master's Head / 'Tis better than the Eider Duck's / Deep Pillow- to have shared -" When I read this I have such a vivid picture in my mind's eye of the gun's master (the gun owner) using the gun during the day, to kill as mentioned later in the poem, and sleeping with it beneath his pillow at night. Overall, an eerie poem but this stanza made everything come together for me.