Bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com Website Review

Blogging all the poems of Emily Di*kinson, by Susan Kornfeld In search of Something – as it seemed – Then Cloudier become – And then – obscure with Fog – And then – be soldered down Without disclosing what it be 'Twere blessed to have seen –                                                   Fr 647 (1863)  J547 The living have no way to really know what happens after death. There are the usual reports from the near dead or briefly dead: the tunnel with a light at the end, for example; or the evanescing (or perhaps effervescing) into the vast Oneness of the Cosmos. But we tend to take these tales with a grain of salt. The brain might be doing strange things as it closes down. We may be conditioned to expect certain outcomes and, thus, imagine we've seen them.         In this poem, the speaker waits by a death bed or death beds hoping the dying person will provide some indication of what might be glimpsed as he or she pas*es through the veil separating life from death. But no such indication is forthcoming.         It's a poem of frustration rather than grief. The speaker Eyes see anything of note. They become cloudy, then obscured, and then, finally, closed in the finality of death. The poem ends with the speaker frustrated that nothing has been revealed, but Di*kinson seems to imply that the dying are not blessed to have seen anything. In another poem's death scene frustration, a dying person heard a Fly buzz when she died rather than seeing the King, undoubtedly Jesus or some other representation of God or the divine, that those gathered around her were clearly expecting. Instead she sees only a fly as her Windows failed. The incongruous and existential disparity between savior and fly in this poem (Fr591 Di*kinson refrains from the hushed respect accorded death bed watches. While the buzzing blue fly is an almost sarcastic dismissal of hopes for a divine encounter,  Sharon Leiter  says that the Dying Eye's searching in the current poem suggests nothing so much as a demented