The Virtues of Verse

When I was in grade school, poetry was one of my favorite forms of literature. Ever since reading Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers years ago, her name has stuck in my memory. I devoured Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven and committed Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Swing to memory. These three, along with Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, enchanted me with their words. Something about the language and rhythm of these poets’ works captured my heart. When I saw Dickinson’s name listed as the author of 377 (949), which is titled Under the Light, yet under, it was like coming home. After reading many poems previously unfamiliar to me, the ease of Dickinson’s verses and meter greeted me like an old friend.

It is easy to read Under the lights, yet under aloud. Other poems I have read have had such varied lengths of line that it was difficult to keep the constant beat I enjoy in poetry. With this poem, Dickinson stuck to a fairly uniform number of syllables for each line. In the first and third stanza, the number of syllables per line goes seven, seven, seven, six. Stanzas two and four are a bit more varied (six, five, six, five and seven, six, eight, seven respectively), but still easily read together. For me, Dickinson’s consistency makes it easier to move past deciphering the rhythm and into comprehension of the meaning of her poem.

The overall tone of Under the light, yet under is gloomy. In the first stanza, Dickinson gives a sense of claustrophobia: “Under the Light,…the Grass and the Dirt,…the Beetle’s Cellar…the Clover’s Root.” When reading those lines, I feel buried deep, almost suffocating. She contrasted this subterranean feeling with one of soaring, light as a feather into clouds. “Over the Light,…the Arc of the Bird,…the Comet’s chimney…the Cubit’s Head.” This juxtaposition, coupled with the final line of the poem “Between Ourselves and the Dead!” evokes the image of a grave and heaven.

After someone dies, the distance between his or her spirit and us seems to be the most hopeless emotional chasm to cross.  Death is irreversible, cold and unfeeling, leaving those still alive to mourn the loss alone. The body of the deceased is buried under the earth in a grave; his or her spirit is above, watching over us from heaven. Both are out of reach no matter how hard we try.