Emily Dickinson

Love & Nature Emily Dickinson

In this volume you will find two collections - one about love, one about nature. The contrast of the two collections emphasizes Dickinson's contras-ting views on human connection and connection with nature. Her poems of love are filled with the sentiments of love unfulfilled; she finds comfort in the very experience of loving though it not be satisfied. Her love poems have imagery of gems and precious stones threading throughout and tell stories of the pleasure of possessing the jewel of love, if only to have it disappear. In love, she is shy and reticent to communicate her feelings. For Dickinson, love is a personal experience that brings a fragile sort of temporary delight -sometimes fonder in its memory than immediate experience. In nature, however, Dickinson is completely different. She sees herself as a creature of the wild and feels safe and welcome there. She finds heaven in the changing of the seasons and holiness in the songs of birds. And perhaps her most repeated image, that of bees visiting the humble clover, she finds the most meaning. The pedigree of honey / Does not concern the bee; / A clover, any time, to him / Is aristocracy. Throughout many of Dickinson's poems, she mentions religious images but it is in nature that she feels true reverence and sacredness. Where love creates constriction, nature creates expansion. Where love is an unattainable, cold treasure, nature is welcoming paradise. And, where in love there is a sense of hiding oneself, in nature Dickinson wholly loses herself. Emma Wallace, Singer-songwriter