"We dream -- it is good we are dreaming --"

We dream -- it is good we are dreaming --
It would hurt us -- were we awake --
But since it is playing -- kill us,
And we are playing -- shriek --

What harm? Men die -- externally --
It is a truth -- of Blood --
But we -- are dying in Drama --
And Drama -- is never dead --

Cautious -- We jar each other --
And either -- open the eyes --
Lest the Phantasm -- prove the mistake --
And the livid Surprise

Cool us to Shafts of Granite --
With just an age -- and name --
And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian --
It's prudenter -- to dream --

F (584), 1863

This poem sees Dickinson continuing to indulge in the exploits of the vaguely macabre, as it appears to offer a somewhat surreal endorsement of nightmares and theatrical death as a means of feeling a connection to the concept of one's mortality without dying in actuality. The notion of "playing" along with these imaginary deaths is juxtaposed by the recognition that, while death represents an undeniable fact of life, the stark imagery of suddenly being reduced to mere "Shafts of Granite" places an alienating and cold finality that the comparative sublime ideal of "dying in Drama" does not. 

It is particularly worth noting that the date of the poem's writing would have positioned it right during the middle of the Civil War. In a situation where "Men die -- externally" in massive quantities every day and the "truth -- of Blood" would have been virtually ever-present and unavoidable in the news, one can understand why the concept of imagined death in a nightmare or fictional death in a play or other form of drama where the knowledge that it wasn't really happening would have served some form of comfort, maybe even providing a kind of therapeutic tool to help come to terms with that real life carnage. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) presented a scenario in which it was not
"prudenter-- to dream --"

In a modern context, it's hard not to associate this poem and its message with the immense popularity and longevity of the horror film genre. As Dickinson states, "Drama -- is never dead --" and the success of decades of films spotlighting all kinds of varieties of gruesome deaths and nightmares captured on celluloid has certainly proved that point in spades. There is an undeniable catharsis that comes from being able to view the darker, more morbid aspects of existence through a "prudenter" imagined lens. It allows us to fathom our own mortality and, in a broad sense, the human condition as a whole, in ways that give us a taste of that fear without actually putting us in danger of the "Phantasm -- prov[ing] the mistake." It's interesting to examine how the poem's interplay between dreams and death has been mirrored by the development of the genre as well, with high profile series like A Nightmare on Elm Street and heavy reliance on dream logic emphasized in the works of Italian auteurs like Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red) and Lucio Fulci (The Beyond, City of the Living Dead). The combined effect of these directors' vibrant use of color, fluid, POV-style camerawork, and elaborate, often nonsensical plotlines function to emulate the powerful feelings that can come from a harrowing nightmare, touching upon that certain sense of the sublime that Dickinson hints at in the poem. 

"How much the present moment means"

How much the present moment means
To those who've nothing more --
The Fop -- the Carp -- the Atheist --
Stake an entire store
Opon a Moment's shallow Rim
While their commuted Feet
The Torrents of Eternity
Do all but inundate --

F (1420), 1877

Conventional depiction of a fop

This deeply ironic poem finds Dickinson's speaker profiling and summarily chastising a cast of characters who spend their lives living irreverently or inefficiently despite their time on earth being limited. These individuals choose to distract themselves with petty concerns such as narcissistic self-obsession ("The Fop"), unnecessary complaining and criticism ("the Carp"), and willful and prideful disbelief ("the Atheist") instead of making the most of the all too short "present moment" they have been allotted.  

The tone of this poem feels strikingly more passive-aggressive and considerably more dogmatic than we may be accustomed to hearing from Dickinson, which makes the possibility that she's attempting to take on some kind of other persona through the speaker a plausible explanation, perhaps one of a disgruntled pastor or some other religious figure. This is especially pertinent in how intact the sense of faith and belief that is channeled here seems to be. While it's true that Dickinson has a fair share of poems steeped in proclamations of rather blunt faith ("I never saw a moor"), these poems feel like outliers compared to the much more significant quantity of her works which depict intense struggles with questions of faith, God's true nature, and the existence of an afterlife ("I felt a funeral, in my brain" and "I shall know why-- when Time is over" serving as perfect examples). The fact that many of those same poems can also easily be read as "carping" about life's complexities and big unknowns to one degree or another adds another layer of irony, leading one to wonder if a self-aware Dickinson could be using the poem as a way to poke fun at her own proclivity for focusing on the darker, more troubling facets of life during a finite existence. 

Here, however, she seems to back away from those questions with a notable distance in order to lampoon the behavior of these others. The mention of the three individuals' feet are "commuted" seems to subtly invoke the concept of Jesus' dying for humanity's sins, with the implicit criticism being that they are squandering that sacrifice with their careless and selfish attitude towards existence, a much more directly traditional Christian endorsement than Dickinson is prone to making. We are ultimately led to understand that the answer to the poem's implied question of "How much [does] the present moment mean/To those who've nothing more[?]" is "not very," but the reasoning that gets us there almost borders on hypocrisy. Perhaps, in Dickinson's rationale, these characters' attitudes on life are as "shallow" as the limited time we have on earth in a relative sense because they are complacent and not truly engaging with life's questions in a meaningful manner, but that places her own battles coming to terms with them in a somewhat awkward light. Barring the potentiality of self-awareness or abstraction through an imagined speaker, this poem stands as one of the more perplexing entries in the Dickinson canon.   

"On my volcano grows the Grass"

On my volcano grows the Grass
A meditative spot --
An acre for a Bird to choose
Would be the General thought --

How red the Fire rocks below
How insecure the sod
Did I disclose
Would populate with awe my solitude.

F (1743), Undated. 

Dickinson's volcano poems represent an especially compelling subset of her oeuvre, with all of them finding her channeling the imagery of the destructive powers the geological formations possess in order to touch upon a variety of metaphors that stretch across her body of work. This particular entry features Dickinson picturing the precarious position the nature that has flourished upon her now dormant volcano is in, knowing that if she so chose, she could obliterate them and render herself alone again.

The grass-covered Musuan volcano in the Philippines.
Last known eruption in 1886.

Like most of the others in the series, there is an intense undercurrent of violence and danger that runs throughout the poem, in this case demonstrated by the "red...Fire" which "rocks below" the pastoral and "meditative" scene taking place right above it. It is interesting to note, however, that while the fear of the unknown is generally a recurring topic of Dickinson's work, here she almost seems to relish the power she has over the nature that has, completely unbeknownst to it, encroached upon her "solitude." It is somewhat hard not to take into account the potential double meaning "sod" may have given this reading, serving as both the literal earth and also perhaps the pejorative insult. The dark humor present in the final line (the lava "populat[ing]" that newfound solitude "with awe" by destroying everything around it) appears to further this concept. As Charles Anderson states, "...a volcano may be said to enjoy disclosing its inner fires" (172).

Attempts to psychoanalyze Dickinson should certainly be approached with caution, but this poem lends itself to that end quite well in that the divide depicted within it can easily be viewed as a metaphor for her own mental state and public image. In some sense, it can even be seen to function as a kind of reflexive commentary on the scope of her poetry as a whole, as it includes bucolic and ruminative considerations of nature's beauty and peacefulness just as it contains much darker pictures of death, existential anguish, and grief. That a fascination with each of these components constituted an important part of Dickinson's life is hard to disprove, and it is here that she may be recognizing that constant dichotomy herself, perhaps hinting at the cathartic value she finds in addressing the more morbid aspects of existence through her art that would surely alienate her from her peers if she were to discuss them more openly. Her issues with traditional displays of faith, gender roles, and general contempt for the vapidity of her society explored in poems such as “What Soft – Cherubic Creatures –” certainly reveal the lengths to which she sometimes found herself at odds with her contemporary 1800s Amherst community, so the notion that she may have used her largely unpublished poems as a way to safely expound upon and engage in her individuality is not far-fetched.   

Cody, John. “Emily Dickinson's Vesuvian Face.” American Imago, vol. 24, no. 3, 1967, pp. 161-180. JSTOR. 

https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=271070

"I'm ceded -- I've stopped being theirs --"

I'm ceded -- I've stopped being Theirs --
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I've finished threading -- too --

Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace --
Unto supremest name --
Called to my Full -- The Crescent dropped --
Existence's whole Arc, filled up,
With one small Diadem.

My second Rank -- too small the first --
Crowned -- Crowing -- on my Father's breast --
A half unconscious Queen --
But this time -- Adequate -- Erect,
With Will to choose, or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown --

F (353), 1862

Despite all the different lenses of interpretation and varying schools of thought critics choose to view her life and work through, Emily Dickinson comes across perhaps most consistently as a fierce individualist. This image is given considerable weight by poems like this one, which effectively functions as a declaration of independence of sorts, following its speaker's powerful recognition of her newfound autonomy and agency to make decisions for herself that she has discovered on her journey to maturity.

The poem's content certainly welcomes a feminist reading, particularly along the lines of marriage. The first stanza's fixation on the shedding of "The name They dropped" on the speaker at her christening as a baby (a choice decided for her) could possibly be being juxtaposed with the adoption of the "supremest name" of her potential husband, a choice that she now makes "...consciously, of Grace." However, the speaker's note that they possess the "Will to choose, or to reject" and their ultimate choice of "just a Crown" in the poem's final line seems to suggest a resistance to marriage as an institution and a prioritization of the sovereignty of self instead. 

There is also ample evidence that allows one to read the poem as a commentary on religion and spirituality in a somewhat similar manner. Dickinson's speaker seems to renounce the kind of religion pushed upon her as a child when she was "Baptized, without the choice" in favor of the newly informed version she has been granted through experience. As Wendy Martin notes, when it came to matters of faith Dickinson often conducted herself in thoroughly "non-traditional terms" (58). Thus, the notion of her proclaiming her ability to choose how to define her own individual brand of faith, or reject it entirely, feels prescient in this case. 

Potential representation of "The Crescent"  

Dickinson's diction throughout the poem also provides us interesting in-roads for interpretation. There's a certain degree of bitter detachment in her inverted phrasing when she states that the name she was christened with "Is finished using, now," almost personifying it as a kind of parasite she's finally free of. The Dickinson lexicon gives one possible meaning for "The Crescent" that Dickinson refers to as the "domain above the grave where the moon waxes and wanes." If we're to interpret that as emblematic of life itself, then the next line's assertion that "Existence's whole Arc, filled up" was illuminated to her is paradoxical. How can the whole arc be filled when one has only experienced a crescent of it, and, smaller still, only a mere portion of that Crescent itself?

In this sense, it may be particularly worth noting that the final stanza's word pairing of "Adequate -- Erect" occurs again in a later poem, "The Props assist the House" (F 729): 

The Props assist the House

Until the House is built

And then the Props withdraw

And adequate, erect,

The House support itself

And cease to recollect

The Augur and the Carpenter --
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life --
A Past of Plank and Nail
And slowness -- then the scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul --

Taken in tandem, this later poem almost seems to function as a more meditative reflection on some of the ideas espoused in "I'm ceded." Perhaps eventually Dickinson came to reevaluate the name "dropped" on her as well as the dolls and spools of thread of her childhood not as hindrances to her achieving her individuality, but merely as some of the components (i.e. props) that allowed her to be able craft it in the first place. The vocal assertion of her independence may constitute her "second Rank" while the more nuanced reflection on how she got there that this poem offers could very well represent the successive one, and another portion of The Crescent. 

Martin, Wendy. The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

http://edl.byu.edu/lexicon/term/602442

"A little Madness in the Spring"

A little Madness in the Spring 

Is wholesome even for the King, 

But God be with the Clown --
Who ponders this tremendous scene --

This whole Experiment of Green --

As if it were his own!

F (1356), 1875

Like a great deal of Dickinson's work, this poem offers quite an array of different avenues for interpretation despite its rather compact, six-line, one stanza length. In her estimation of the trappings of what is colloquially known as "spring fever" she broaches upon man's relationship to nature, highlighting the idea that we do not truly own or understand it and condemning those who behave as if they do. 

Dickinson's usage of the term "Experiment of Green" to describe nature and its beauty is particularly interesting, as it may lead one's interpretation on divergent paths based on who exactly the "experimenter" is, in this case most likely boiling down to either a personification of Nature or God himself. On the one hand, she could be examining Nature's relative unpredictability in this role, positioning the motions of the seasons not as concrete phases that are set in stone, but as something subject to change, much like the dependent variable of a scientific inquiry. This is especially poignant in a modern context, as climate change becomes an increasingly pressing issue. There may soon come a day where the results of Nature's "experimentation" become wildly different from what we've grown accustomed to. The fact that much of the responsibility for that may lay upon the shoulders of generations of "Clown[s]" who treated Earth "As if it were [their] own" is hard to ignore. 

On the other hand, viewing God as the experimenter seems to welcome a connection to the deist philosophy that Dickinson would have likely had some exposure to, one that upholds the existence of a creator but believes that he has no real interaction with his creations. This kind of reading creates a compelling tension within the rest of the poem. How can God really "be with the Clown" who pridefully and greedily roams Earth if he is inherently distanced from humanity by principle? The notion that he cannot bleakly suggests that those who exploit the Earth for their own goals cannot be reached and are thus doomed to continue contributing to its downfall. 

American Progress, John Gast. 1872.
Offers a perspective of the positive view of manifest destiny.

On this token, a political reading is also pertinent. Dickinson lived through much of the era of westward expansion and would have been no stranger to the concept of manifest destiny, or the idea that acquiring more territory was a quest thoroughly ordained and endorsed by God. The hubris involved in the presiding collective view that portrayed land and nature as commodities to be conquered and controlled rather than admired and respected, coupled with the often violent and destructive ramifications these undertakings would have, is certainly not lost on her. She appears to recognize that this is partly human nature in the poem's opening lines, considering it "wholesome even for the King." But it is clear that when she says "A little" she is making the important distinction that there are boundaries that can be overstepped and that we must be mindful of them if the "tremendous scene" that nature provides us is to have any hope of enduring.