Is Emily Dickinson a Metaphysical Poet?

© Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines 33, no. 3, 2003 Is Emily Dickinson a Metaphysical Poet? Sarah Emsley Emily Dickinson has been called “a major metaphysical poet of the nineteenth century” (Thota 161) and even, “if any nineteenth-century writer can be called this, the American metaphysical” (Keller 203). In recent years, criticism of Dickinson has tended to focus more on investigating aspects of her immediate historical context than on exploring her use of the conventions of metaphysical poetry, but the question of whether or not she can usefully be considered a metaphysical poet is worth raising once more.1 Does she think about ideas in ways that are distinctly metaphysical? Does she explore techniques that are specifically metaphysical? She frequently engages with both metaphysical ideas and metaphysical techniques, and she is often, if not always, a metaphysical poet. Reading her poems in light of the characteristics of metaphysical poetry shows how her work is connected with the larger tradition of this complex approach to questions about the nature of existence. Metaphysical poetry is not limited to the seventeenth century, any more than the ontological and cosmological questions it addresses are limited. Several critics have identified Dickinson’s poetry as metaphysical, and by investigating what definitions they have used, it will be possible to examine in what sense she can be called a metaphysical poet. Karl Keller has noted that “Most of the more significant features of Emily Dickinson’s poetry have at one time or another been rather loosely classified as metaphysical—her playfulness, her unusual vocabulary, her tension of thought,” and he suggests that, for his purposes, “it will be necessary to restrict the discussion to those few attitudes, themes, and patterns of imagery that remind one rather specifically of seventeenth-century practice” (189–90). What Keller identifies as the characteristics of Dickinson’s poetry that most closely resemble those of seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry are the following: “complexity of attitudes toward experience,” Canadian Review of American Studies 33 (2003) 250 “meditative vision,” wit, focus on the theme of death, the use of “fresh nonpoetic materials for surprising metaphorical effect,” the use of “wittily incongruous and ingenious combinations for boldness of imagery,” and the “creation of extended conceits” (190–203). Like Keller, C.J. Fisher lists what may be thought of as “the most quintessential features that distinguish seventeenth-century poetry”: “concentration of thought,” “conciseness of language and the frequent use of abrupt, attention-getting openings,” “the use of the conceit as a controlling image,” and “the desire to startle” (77– 80). Both Keller and Fisher see the metaphysical as a style of poetry, though Keller gets closer to the concept of metaphysics than Fisher does, by gesturing to the “complexity of attitudes toward experience ”; however, his view of this complexity is related to Dickinson’s belief that “’Tis Opposites—entice,” and so he sees the important tensions as being between pain and pleasure, joy and despair, faith and doubt, and so on. Most poetry involves something like this kind of complexity, and so Keller is not yet defining what constitutes uniquely metaphysical poetry, in any century. James Smith’s 1933 article “On Metaphysical Poetry” provides a more precise definition.2 First of all, Smith’s analysis of the sheer difficulty of metaphysical poetry may be relevant to the case of Dickinson . He remarks that “[m]etaphysics is ‘puzzling,’ if I may retain the homely word, in a peculiar way. It is not that, to the matters it studies , there is an abundance of clues, so that the mind is lost among them; or that there is a shortage of clues, so that the mind is left hesitant ; but rather, that such clues as there are, while equally trustworthy , are contradictory” (266). It seems possible that Dickinson’s poems are difficult and puzzling in a metaphysical way, though it is also possible that they are puzzling because deliberately obscure. What Fisher and Keller refer to as the characteristic style of metaphysical poetry may echo the general assumptions many critics make and may even approximate the definition that is usually used in teaching the metaphysicals. But it has little to do with the philosophical...