Review by Rebecca Bianchini, 12
This poem, the 809th by Emily Dickinson, perfectly captures her essence as a writer. In her lifetime, she wrote over 1800 poems about her inner thoughts and feelings and kept them hidden- with the exception of a few which she included in letters to her close friends and family. Her father forbade her from publishing her works but that didn’t dissuade her from writing. Most of her poems are short like this one and discuss passionate topics like love and death which was considered taboo at the time. Her obsession with the afterlife is apparent in this work as she equates both lovers and the objects of their affection to the transformation of an individual into a divine and eternal being. She identified herself as agnostic which contributes to the relation between love and eternal life as she believed that God or the afterlife was unable to be proven, as is the complicated feeling of love. The idea that loving someone allows them to live forever stems from the lover’s desire for comfort after their loved one is no longer physically attainable and Dickinson extends this idea further to include both parties and the idea that love is never-ending and cannot be separated even by death. Emily Dickinson provides many examples that poems don’t have to be lengthy or complex to envoke deep internal debates which I believe is merit in receiving a 4 star rating.Â