The dashes and rhymes in Emily Dickinson’s poetry

The distinct ebb and flow of the noted American poet’s verse makes for a thrilling and engaging read

Dec 10 is the birthday of Emily Dickinson, regarded as one of the most influential and important poets of America’s literary history.

Do you love poetry? If you do, take a quick look at a few lines from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

“I have so much to do—

And yet—Existence—some way back—

Stopped—struck—my ticking—through—"

Sounds like a song, doesn’t it? The alliteration of the /s/ sound in the last line, along with the rhyming of ‘do’ with ‘through’ is satisfying. It is beautiful, but have you read it properly? Many readers won’t. They would ignore the dashes. The dash punctuation mark (—) indicates a pause. The period, or full stop is also a pause, but the difference is a period concludes a sentence, while a dash is only a pause between two words or phrases.

I urge you to read the lines again, this time maintaining the pauses of the dashes. Now, does the rhythm sound like panting to you? Almost as if the speaker is out of breath? But why?

This is Dickinson’s poem no. 443, titled “I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl”. In the context of the poem, the pauses or ‘panting’ can be perceived as anxiety, almost as if the writer is experiencing a panic attack.

Can you feel the presence of that anxiety?

Without the dashes, reading this poem definitely does not feel the same. This is the power of punctuation. Emily Dickinson utilizes them with a novel brilliance. However, this doesn’t mean all her poems use dashes in the same way. In some, they create a cold tone, while in others the dashes are a device to lend gravity. I won’t be prescriptive with my descriptions and instead allow you to discover their breadth yourself.

However, dashes aren’t the only thing that makes Dickinson’s poetry so real. Her style of rhyming has deep significance and cultivates an immersive experience.

Dickinson’s poem no. 340, titled “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” is an excellent example.

In terms of rhyme and rhythm, it flows smoothly at a consistent pace. However, in the concluding stanza, things change. Instead of a full rhyme, where the second and fourth lines of every stanza rhyme, the last stanza ends with an eye rhyme, a case where the rhyme scheme suggests two words should rhyme, but they do not. It is jarring. The poem ends abruptly with no conclusion and the tension remains unresolved. Thus, the reader doesn’t get any satisfying closure, neither in terms of rhyme, nor in terms of the narrative of the poem.

This overall experience leaves the reader feeling uneasy. The poem is about the experience of death, or the process of how death takes one over. This is a sensation that is essentially uncomfortable, and daunting, similar to the uneasiness you felt while reading the poem.

Emily Dickinson wrote thousands of poems. Fortunately, 1,800 of them survived in print. Her other poems also utilise rhyme and punctuation in unique, distinctive ways. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but if you keep reading them and take care to notice each dot, dash or experiment with rhyme scheme, you will get a truly engaging experience.

This article is a preview of literature coverage at Stripe, bdnews24.com’s page for exciting, in-depth analysis of society and culture from a youth perspective. The page is set to launch soon.