Poetry
Written May 12 2025
I generally don't like poetry. I know, it's basic to dislike poetry, but I just don't. There are some poems that I do like, e.g. Edgar Allan Poe's and to a lesser degree William Blake's. I can't even properly put into words what I don't like about them. I think it's partly stylistically; I don't really like the condensation of language within poems and the fluidity with which ideas are connected. I also don't like stream-of-consciousness stories and the like, so this checks out. On the other hand, I do use these techniques myself from time to time and I think there's nothing wrong with them in general. I think what also irks me is the brevity. I do like brevity, but so much poetry feels too hasty. I like to write things out thoroughly. Elision can be pretty interesting, but the general condensation going on in poetry is a bit too much (or maybe too little?) for me.
I had to read some of Emily Dickinson’s poems for university and despite these reservations, I thought they were fantastic. This is the first poem:
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My mind was going numb –
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –
I really liked the atmosphere that this poem created. I picture a woman thinking about her own death and picturing a funeral in her head. The way that the sentences spill over the individual lines, forming these long, run-on sentences makes the whole thing seem full of movement, almost like a funeral procession. The stanzas ending in dashes, the sentences incomplete, gives a sense of unease and incompleteness, like an early or sudden death. I really like how these structural elements are intertwined with what the poem is trying to say or make you feel. The way that sentences flow into each other also gives them a real dreamlike quality. One example is in the third and fourth stanzas, ‘Then Space – began to toll,/ As all the Heavens were a Bell,’. First, you think that somehow space tolls, which shifts to heaven and then bells. This makes me think of the way that things and concepts sort of morph into each other in my own dreams, kind of like the uncanny instability of AI videos. Just like how a dream can descent into chaos, the last stanza also does. The rhyming scheme from earlier (ABAB), which was already broken up with non-rhyming lines here and there, completely vanishes. The lines no longer rhyme, just as the dream ends, with falling, plunging and then a final interrupted conclusion. It’s great.
A lot of the poetry we had to read in school was Classical or Romantic poetry – Goethe, Schiller, Mörike, von Eichendorff, all the German classics – which was painfully boring to me. I don’t really like poetry about Truth or Nature or God or Beauty. They are fascinating windows into their authors’ worldviews, yes, but they are also painfully unrelatable to anyone who is not an 18th/19th century upper middle-class man. Not to beat the Old White Man horse too much, but they really aren’t all that interesting. This Dickinson poem was great though and I can’t wait to dig some more into her poetry in my spare time.
This was the other Emily Dickinson poem I really liked:
I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –
And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – opon the Sands –
But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –
And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –
And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –
Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –
It has this same dreamlike atmosphere as the first. To me it feels really visceral, even though it has a lot more of that dreamy metaphorical writing. It also feels really disjointed at times, which just adds to that feeling. The last stanza is, I think, a great example of that. The way the dashes chop up the sentence structure, leaving you confused as to what is happening, really does make you feel as if an enormous tide washes over you. The way that a pretty dry but dreamy sequence of visiting the sea and daydreaming about the ocean and its mysteries turns into a mad chase scene echoes this.
I am going to end this with another poem, In a Station of the Metro published in 1913. This one is by Ezra Pound. I really like the imagery in this one.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.