Discovering The Revolutionist-Emily Dickinson

Ten years ago I discovered something that would change my life forever. It was a late and gloomy autumn afternoon. The sky was bleak, and it had been raining all day. I was at my grandmother's spacious old house where there was absolutely nothing for a twelve-year-old to do. So I decided to explore the mysterious house. I crept upstairs to the second floor and peeped in all the rooms. There was a strange musty smell from all of the ancient furniture. The paintings were magnificent and haunting. Like my mother, I have always had a rich taste for art and literature. I then noticed a tiny staircase at the end of the hall that seemed to lead to an attic.

My curiosity was too much for me to suppress. The old wood of the stairs creaked and moaned as I made my way up them. With some difficulty I managed to push open the door. Dust, spider webs, and mold clouded my vision for a split moment. And then I looked around; it was quite large and lofty. However, my attention became immediately focused on a huge, old, and beautifully elaborate chest. I went to it and dusted it off. My fingers wandered to its lock and slowly I lifted the top to find an array of intricate and personal things. But the thing that caught my eye was the numerous bundles of papers tied with silk pastel colored ribbons. After untying them, I discovered that the papers were poems, and I read and I read and I was fixated. This was my great discovery. Thunder rolled.

What I discovered was the many hundreds of poems of my great-aunt, Emily Dickinson. I kept those bundles, and after I had achieved my degree in literature, I decided that these poems had to be published. I edited them, but still tried to keep the originality of their verse. They then became the keen interest of many critics. There are two poems that had especially great impact on readers including myself.

The first of these poems leaves a lasting effect on one's brain, quite interestingly enough since the first line includes the brain in a most dark way, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain". This is a rather peculiar way to open, and it is quite a depressing and exciting image. And with her punctuation and tone, Dickinson proclaims it so subtly and calmly. There is a rhythm and beat that she repeats just twice, but just twice is just enough to evoke and control the reader; the first insert of this beat occurs in line three of the first stanza, "Kept treading - treading - till it seemed". Full control then takes place in the third line of the second stanza with repetition of the same rhythm, "Kept beating - beating - till I thought". This is was very clever of Ms. Dickinson, because it has an illusion and it captures your ear. This poem is dark and very forlorn.

My favorite line of the poem is, "Then Space - began to toll". It gives me an image of a dark and wide universe, spinning the soul. The ending for this dramatic poem is perfect because like the beginning, it is subtle; and ironically it does not end the poem, it leaves you thinking that there is more, "And Finished knowing - then - ". I strongly think that this was perfectly intentional by Ms. Dickinson; she wants us to discover the end, if there is an end, by living our own lives, most likely when we are on our own deathbeds. This poem is about death and the transition of the Soul, in my opinion.

Death has been the subject for many poets (which is also why those such poems have had such impact and power), however, the way in which Emily Dickinson approaches the meaning of death made her a revolutionist for her time in literature. Sylvia Plath had a very similar tone, description, and view on the subject of death, but not until six or seven decades later. Plath allowed the readers and audiences