Dickinson's Choice

I think what I enjoy most about Emily Dickinson's poetry is its endless readability. One can spend hours parsing a single piece, first enjoying its sounds without worrying about the meaning latent in their abnormalities before running it through a wide array of interpretive cycles in the name of peeling back these abstractions.

For one of my courses last semester, I had to go through this very process with Dickinson's "[303]." This poem's words, complex as standalone units, are riddled with newfound significances after the application of Dickinson's trademark capitalizations and dashes. The base of this poem, if one reads it as a sort of biographical piece (not to say that this is the only way to read it), is the power present in Dickinson's relative isolation, as well as in the presence of "her own Society - " rather than the clamor or expectations harbored by that "divine Majority - " she shuts the door on (1-4). This power extends into Dickinson's (or one of her persona's) sense of feminine empowerment as well, the poem's speaker deigning to glance at what appears to be "an Emperor...kneeling / Opon her Mat - ." One might also interpret this as Dickinson's spurning of suitors she deems inadequate, an interpretive path that seems to be supported by the contents of the third and most ambiguous stanza. Here, Dickinson's speaker seems to switch registers, either talking to "The Soul" or to some other party. The words dole out advice on choosing a lover or perhaps a society before concluding with the lines, "close the Valves of her attention - Like Stone - ."