Poetry analysis: This World is Not a Conclusion, by Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson is a very fun poet. It is way too easy to make fun of her and her poetry. For instance, I can let you know that nearly all of her poems can be sung to the Gilligan’s Island theme song or “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” It certainly is memorable when you hear “Nature the gentlest mother is” performed that way. Her famous reclusiveness and her penchant for dressing in white are equally an easy target for the parodist. Finally, her often sentimental and simplistic view of life, especially given her inability or unwillingness to really get out there and participate in the affairs of life, make her seem naive at best, pretentious at worst.
But there is much to praise in this Belle of Amherst, and “This World is Not a Conclusion,” is a good place to begin. Dickinson trots out her usual suspects of mechanical tools in this poem: near rhyme and slant rhyme, very simple and consistent rhyme scheme, the use of dashes and impromptu punctuation. But this poem is very close to an epiphany that is extremely rare in the world of letters, and even better, it does not suffer from the pretense that mars some of her works.
The poem’s thesis is that “This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond -.” Dickinson believes that after this life another one awaits, a world, and existence that surpasses this one. Now, this is nominally a common theme for Dickinson. Her, “I never saw a moor,” is all about her firm faith that there is a heaven that awaits us after death. But this poem discusses our reaction to that knowledge, our subsequent actions to that undeniable after-existence.
“To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion”
Faith in the afterlife is beyond reason and objective experiment, regardless of some of Dickinson’s contemporaries’ efforts to weigh the soul. But she also points to the martyrs of their faith who give all to achieve it. But her feelings toward this religious view of the next life is obvious.
“Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul -”
Religion, for Dickinson, cannot disguise the truth of our inevitable leaning into eternity. Dickinson read the map to heaven as easily as if it were a visible chart (See “I never saw a moor”). Some call this her “interior landscape.”
Dickinson is often called a “metaphysical” poet. This poem may be the best example of her devotion and insight into this superlative meta-life.
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