Dwelling in Possibility

In order to write literary criticism well, you must first recognize what exactly you're going to argue. This is done through a process called "pre-writing" which is simply everything you do before sitting down to write. My earlier blog post named Understanding Poetry in 8 Steps outlines eight different steps that we can take to understand what a poem is about but there is always more that we can do to fully understand where an argument is going to take us. In that post, I analyzed Emily Dickinson's poem "I Dwell in Possibility" and I will be continuing my analysis on that poem in this blog post.

To take my analysis further, I wrote out the poem by hand and did an in-depth study on the form, words, and punctuation used. This helped me to guess more at the intent of the poem.  I started by simply writing it. I took note of certain parts that stuck out to me or things that seemed odd while copying it down to paper. I noticed words that Dickinson has isolated and then drew conclusions as to why those specific words were chosen. I wrote a lot down in my notes because I found this exercise to be more eye-opening that I had thought it would be. 

This blog post gave me more recommendations to help with literary analysis. One in particular that I liked was finding patterns in the text. I love looking for patterns so this suggestion was perfect for me. I looked through the poem once more and noticed that the first letter of every last word is capitalized--except for one "prose" in the first stanza. This made me wonder what the significance of that word was. The line reads, "A fairer house than prose--". After pondering it for a moment, I wondered if it simply wasn't important. All the other words that are capitalized are metaphors that are supposed to suggest more about the house that Dickinson describes. Since "prose" was simply a comparison maybe it didn't need to be emphasized. Another guess that I had was that Dickinson didn't want to be offensive. She claims that writing poetry is better than writing prose. By leaving "prose" lowercase, it draws less attention to the statement. 

Another aspect of pre-writing is drafting a thesis statement. This presentation gives examples of five different types of thesis statements to use when thinking of the best claim. For Dickinson's poem, I will be covering each of the five types. 

1. Policy claim: Dickinson's poem should be read silently and not aloud in order to understand the full meaning of the poem. 

2. Definition claim: Dickinson's poem gives insight into her personal life through the emphasis and de-emphasis of specific words.

3. Comparison claim: Dickinson's use of punctuation is similar to her own process of thinking. 

4. Evaluation claim: Dickinson's poem shows that it is better to have an occupation that brings satisfaction to a person's life than to work somewhere that fulfills other aspects of need. 

5. Casual claim: The syntax of Dickinson's poem is a result of her own ponderings and emotions. 

This process helped me to understand the different arguments that can be made from even a few lines of poetry. It also showed me the importance of understanding the meaning behind a poem.