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    My Life Had Stood

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    Laura Ungureanu
    Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a prominent family. She often included poems in her letters to friends and was encouraged by them to publish, though she only attempted publication once in 1860. The poem "My Life Had Stood - a Loaded Gun" represents Dickinson characterizing her immense poetic abilities in the most extreme way, speaking through the voice of a gun to present herself as the opposite of what a woman was considered to be in her time: cruel rather than pleasant, hard rather than soft, and one who kills rather than nurtures. The poem compares her smile to the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, signaling completed violence rather than present intimacy. It depicts Dickinson

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    My Life Had Stood

    Uploaded by

    Laura Ungureanu
    206 views2 pages
    Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a prominent family. She often included poems in her letters to friends and was encouraged by them to publish, though she only attempted publication once in 1860. The poem "My Life Had Stood - a Loaded Gun" represents Dickinson characterizing her immense poetic abilities in the most extreme way, speaking through the voice of a gun to present herself as the opposite of what a woman was considered to be in her time: cruel rather than pleasant, hard rather than soft, and one who kills rather than nurtures. The poem compares her smile to the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, signaling completed violence rather than present intimacy. It depicts Dickinson

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    My Life Had Stood

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    Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a prominent family. She often included poems in her letters to friends and was encouraged by them to publish, though she only attempted publication once in 1860. The poem "My Life Had Stood - a Loaded Gun" represents Dickinson characterizing her immense poetic abilities in the most extreme way, speaking through the voice of a gun to present herself as the opposite of what a woman was considered to be in her time: cruel rather than pleasant, hard rather than soft, and one who kills rather than nurtures. The poem compares her smile to the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, signaling completed violence rather than present intimacy. It depicts Dickinson

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    206 views2 pages

    My Life Had Stood

    Uploaded by

    Laura Ungureanu
    Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a prominent family. She often included poems in her letters to friends and was encouraged by them to publish, though she only attempted publication once in 1860. The poem "My Life Had Stood - a Loaded Gun" represents Dickinson characterizing her immense poetic abilities in the most extreme way, speaking through the voice of a gun to present herself as the opposite of what a woman was considered to be in her time: cruel rather than pleasant, hard rather than soft, and one who kills rather than nurtures. The poem compares her smile to the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, signaling completed violence rather than present intimacy. It depicts Dickinson

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun

    Emily Dickinson, one of Americas famous poets, was born in


    Amherst to a prominent family. She often included poetry with her letters
    to friends. Her friends encouraged her to publish, but after an attempt to
    do so in 1860, Emily did not appear to try again.
    Composed during the period when Dickinson had reached the
    height of her poetic prowess, My Life Had Stood represents the poets
    most extreme attempt to characterize the Vesuvian nature of the power
    or art which she believed was hers. Speaking through the voice of gun,
    Dickinson presents herself in this poem as everything woman is not :
    cruel not pleasant, hard not soft, emphatic not weak, one who kills not
    one who nurtures.
    In the first instance, the speaker/ Gun compares her smile to the
    aftermath of a volcanic eruption. Her smile is not like the volcanos fire or
    threat but like its completed act: when she smiles it is as if a volcano had
    erupted. The past perfect verb is more chilling than the present tense
    would be because it signals completion, even in the midst of a
    speculative (as if) comparison; her smile has the cordiality of ash,of
    accomplished violence or death, not just of present.Both uses of the
    perfect tense in this poem distance the speaker from humanity, perhaps
    as any skewed analogy would. Yet by allying herself with catastrophic
    power rather than sexual intimacy, she may also be indicating that the
    former seems more possible or safer to her; even the power of
    volcanoes may be known. The change in tense alerts the reader to the
    peculiarity and importance of the comparisons.
    Here the poet sees herself as split, not between anything so simple
    as masculine and feminine identify but between the hunter, admittedly
    masculine, but also a human person, an active, willing being, and the
    gunan object, condemned to remain inactive until the hunterthe
    ownerstakes possession of it.
    In the psychological context of this archetypal struggle Emily
    Dickinson joins in the killing of the doe without a murmur of pity or regret;
    she wants the independence of will and the power of mind which her
    allegiance with the woodsman makes possible. Specifically, engagement
    with the animus unlocks her artistic creativity; through his inspiration and
    mastery she becomes a poet
    To begin with, for a woman like Dickinson, choosing to be an artist
    could seem to require denying essential aspects of herself and
    relinquishing experience as lover, wife and mother. From other poems we

    know Dickinsons painfully, sometimes excruciatingly divided attitude


    toward her womanhood, but here under the spell of the animus muse
    she does not waver in the sacrifice.

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