Some Thoughts

Of the poems that were picked for class I think that I like “I Had a Guinea Golden” the best. The poem has a couple of very well captured images, which is something that Emily Dickinson is famous for, but it also has a sort of cynicism and well meaning malevolence. The lines “And he no consolation Beneath the sun may find.” are a little malevolent in that they exhibit some desire for harm on the author's part, but at the same time it is a harm intended to bring the wayward friend home to her again. I think that this could be seen as a sentimental womanly poem, if only because the job of keeping a family together and friends moral is a woman's job. We get a sense that the friend has done something bad (he is a “traitor”) but whether he has committed some moral transgression or his crime was leaving her we are not sure.

I think that the poem really speaks to the universal feeling of losing a friend or feeling abandoned by a friend and wishing that they miss you too, or at least that they should be reminded of your existence. This is another thing that Dickinson accomplishes with many of her poems, this sort of window into the common soul. I think that this contrasts well with Whitman, because while he was attempting to paint a picture of the American spirit through the portrayal of every voice, Dickinson does it through the portrayal of her very own personal soul. I like this way better, and it comes off as less intrusive and more real. The fact that Dickinson is not trying to speak for people she is not, the bricklayer, the mason, the slave, makes her poetry more believable, and the fact that we may have felt the same way before makes it universally relatable.

The poems “Emancipation” and “Escape” could be held up as counterexamples, but I still believe that Emily Dickinson is the narrator here. Since we just read the slave narratives it is easy to forget that the state of women's rights during this time was pretty bad as far as politics and equality were concerned (although it wasn't anything as bad as the situation of slavery-I'm not suggesting that). The political inequality would be one that Dickinson would have felt pretty strongly considering that many of the men in her family were politicians.