Emily Dickinson: Poet of Death

Reclusive and fiercely talented, 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous and influential American writers. Her short, pithy stanzas still burst with life and energy–even when they contemplate dark themes of mortality. Hop into the carriage as we explore some of the most notable Emily Dickinson poems about death.

Life and Work

Emily Dickinson was the daughter of a lawyer and Massachusetts state senator, and later U.S. congressman, Edward Dickinson. Her early studies at the Amherst Academy left her with a lifelong interest in science–especially botany, and she loved cultivating flowers. Throughout her life she remained close with her brother Austin and sister Lavinia, and especially her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, but the social duties expected of the daughter of a prominent politician wore on her, and she gradually withdrew from society to focus on her writing. 

Dickinson was also a skilled baker, and one of her loaves of bread won second place in the Amherst Cattle Show in 1856. (She often jotted down ideas and lines of poetry on things like recipes and chocolate wrappers.) She also participated in events put on by students and faculty at Amherst College–which contradicts the popular notion that she never left her house.

Although she is sometimes portrayed as a hermit in the collective imagination, Dickinson maintained a close circle of friends and corresponded with them frequently. She never married, and her letters express a dislike of domestic duties and societal expectations that would take her away from her work: “God keep me from what they call households,” she exclaimed in a letter to her friend Abiah Root in 1850. 

Lines written by Dickinson on an envelope.

Perhaps fittingly for a poet so obsessed with the idea of dying, Dickinson’s poems were largely unpublished during her lifetime. She achieved astounding posthumous notoriety when her poetry was first published in 1890, four years after her death, going on to influence Modernist writers and help create a uniquely American style of expressive verse.

Dickinson was incredibly prolific, writing over 1800 poems in her lifetime, which she assembled in handbound volumes. Her poems consist of short lines and stanzas, often in iambic tetrameter (that is, four sets of unstressed-stressed syllables called iambs) alternated with iambic trimeter (three sets of iambs). This is called the ballad form, and it’s used in a lot of traditional songs such as “The House of the Rising Sun” and “Scarborough Fair,” as well as Protestant hymns. It’s also the rhythm of poems like Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the Robert Burns poem “A Red, Red Rose.”

Dickinson’s innovation was to take this familiar, musical form and imbue it with a fierce sense of immediacy and drive, often ending or breaking up lines with em-dashes as though rushing to write down a thought. For all their apparent simplicity, her poems are incisive, funny, morbid, and full of questions about the nature of life.

Your Carriage Awaits: Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”

Dickinson’s most famous poem about death–and probably in general–is the short lyric “Because I could not stop for death.” In it, her speaker is picked up in a carriage by Death, saying “He kindly stopped for me,” and they drive past children playing, fields of grain, and the setting sun, arriving at a “House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground.”

Dickinson frequently portrays the grave as a kind of house, as she does here, putting a domestic, almost cozy face on the Great Beyond. Rather than being an ending, death is a shift in awareness and a new set of surroundings. The speaker says, “Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet / Feels shorter than the Day.” In this poem, death isn’t something to be feared; beyond the “labor and … leisure” of daily life waits an “Eternity” of new life. 

Another interesting facet of this poem is its personification of Death. Readers might be tempted to picture a Grim Reaper figure, and Dickinson’s mention of the carriage driving past fields of grain certainly alludes to this image, but there’s nothing frightening about him. He is defined instead by his kindness and “Civility,” and the speaker tells us “He knew no haste.” 

In six short stanzas, Dickinson’s speaker moves from being unable to accept or “stop for” Death, to a new understanding and experience of Eternity. 

“Wild Nights”: Carpe Diem Poetry

The result of Dickinson’s rather morbid turn of mind is not a gloom-and-doom feeling of despair. Instead, she cherishes small, fleeting moments of beauty and freedom that are made all the more precious by the looming specter of mortality. 

One prominent example of this feeling of liberation in her poetry is “Wild nights - Wild nights!”:

Wild nights - Wild nights!

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile - the winds -

To a Heart in port -

Done with the Compass -

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden -

Ah - the Sea!

Might I but moor - tonight -

In thee!

In this short but powerful lyric, one of Dickinson’s best known poems, the speaker longs to be with a beloved and cast aside worldly cares, reaching for a kind of transcendence represented by “the Sea.” The carpe diem sentiment comes through especially vividly in the lines “Done with the Compass - / Done with the Chart!” In this poem, the rules of navigation are being left by the wayside as the heart has found its home “in port.”

The mention of Eden is interesting here, especially given the passionate subject matter. In the Christian tradition, the Garden of Eden is a place of tranquillity, but here it takes on a sense of the sea’s tempestuousness. At the same time, Dickinson’s speaker is reaching for a transcendent feeling of unity. These 12 tiny lines packed with meanings and associations show how Dickinson is capable of doing a lot with a little.

“A Coffin -  is a small Domain”

A Coffin — is a small Domain,

Yet able to contain

A Citizen of Paradise

In it diminished Plane.

A Grave — is a restricted Breadth —

Yet ampler than the Sun —

And all the Seas He populates

And Lands He looks upon

To Him who on its small Repose

Bestows a single Friend —

Circumference without Relief —

Or Estimate — or End —

In this short poem, Dickinson creates a surprising, amusing image with the idea of a coffin being a “small Domain” and connects this to the “Plane” of Paradise. In the contrast between the grave and the infinite vistas of the seas and lands under the sun, Dickinson shows that death is actually a door to “Circumference without Relief”. 

Rather than being an ending, the grave is a new home for a “Citizen of Paradise.” Dickinson’s wording here is another funny choice, since citizenship is tied to nation states, which are very much of the earthly realm. This could be a playful jab at the idea of worldly cares crossing over into the realm of eternity. 

A recurring theme in Dickinson’s death poetry is a shift in awareness, and this poem is no exception. In it, a small plot of land in which to bury a coffin becomes a gateway to an infinite spiritual plane. 

“I heard a fly buzz - when I died -”

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

Another of Dickinson’s most notable poems, this one contemplates the very moment of death. The speaker is lying in bed, surrounded by witnesses, apparently after a long illness because she writes, “I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away / What portion of me be / Assignable”. 

The speaker’s death is compared to the “Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz” of a fly in the room, presumably bumping into a windowpane. It’s a powerful image for the soul trapped in the confines of the body that also brings the idea of death down to earth by rendering it just a bit ridiculous. 

Of course, the fly also carries associations of decay and putrefaction. In this sense, it is a harbinger of the death of the body. Its placement “between the light - and me” shows that, like the fly, the speaker is bumping up against the limitations of the physical world and seeking freedom. 

Although death is figured as liberation in much of Dickinson’s poetry–and even in this poem she refers to a sort of Christian homecoming “when the King / Be witnessed - in the Room”–the moment of death is still one of haunting ambivalence. The last line is: “I could not see to see.”

The King is a common epithet for Christ, but given Dickinson’s fondness for personifying death in her work, this could also be a sly reference to Death himself. This time, however, there is no genteel carriage whisking the speaker off to a new home; her fate is as uncertain as that of the fly trapped in the room. 

Death as a Cosmic Joke

Scholar Eleanore Lewis Lambert has written about Dickinson’s frequent use of humor surrounding the concept of death. As she writes, “the surface bleakness in many Dickinson ‘death’ poems often shrouds their humorous core” (8). She notes that Dickinson’s view of death was “lighthearted, broadminded, and at the same time deeply serious” (9). 

“Death” in these poems often refers to a shift in awareness or a period of transition rather than literal, physical death. Lambert notes that when she’s talking about catching that big carriage in the sky, Dickinson more commonly uses euphemisms such as “immortality,” “resurrection,” or “eternity” (8).

Lambert argues that “for Dickinson, life is the point of interest; it is life that exhilarates" (27). In Dickinson’s death poems, she uses the notion of endings to make way for new life. Death is transformation, and in that sense it is one of the most life-affirming events possible. As seen in poems like “A Coffin - is a small Domain,” it is “the junction point where apparent loss makes way for fuller life” (27). 

Historical Context: Death in the 19th Century

Emily Dickinson’s poetry about death was, of course, informed by the historical moment she was writing in. The threat of mortality was much closer in the mid-19th century than it is today, because of a lack of modern medical knowledge. Without things like antibiotics, vaccines, and an understanding of germ theory, common occurrences like illness and childbirth could cut a life short without warning. 

In 1858, Dickinson wrote to a friend:

Good-night! I can’t stay any longer in a world of death. Austin [Dickinson’s brother] is ill of fever. I buried my garden last week–our man, Dick, lost a little girl through scarlet fever. I thought perhaps that you were dead, and not knowing the sexton’s address, interrogate the daisies (quoted in Lambert 10).

This short excerpt in which she playfully admonishes her friend for not replying to her letters shows just how much mortality was a part of everyday life in Dickinson’s time–and also how much the poet was willing to joke about it. In another letter to her cousin John Graves, Dickinson drew a picture of a tombstone on the back of the envelope, making a pun on his name (11).

Dickinson also witnessed one of the most tumultuous times in American history: the Civil War. (She even donated several poems to the publication Drum Beat to raise funds for the Union, some of the rare works published during her lifetime (Richards 15).) To this day, it remains the deadliest conflict the U.S. has ever been involved in, going by the number of American soldiers killed. Newspapers were filled with endless lists of casualties, and hospitals overflowed with the wounded. Several of her most famous explorations of mortality were composed during this period. In fact, Lambert notes that “Dickinson’s metaphorical ‘deaths’ directly reflected the American experience of rapid, widespread physical deaths” (12).

With the recent advent of photography, the gruesome aftermath of battle was able to be captured more accurately than ever before. National magazines like Harper’s Illustrated Weekly circulated these images reproduced as woodcuts (Richards 14). It’s likely that Dickinson read Oliver Wendall Holmes’s analysis of these photographs in the Atlantic Monthly. This new technology made the horrors of war more accessible than ever, giving people on the homefront a visceral look at death.

Mourning was also a huge part of American life in the 1800s, as it was throughout the English-speaking world in the Victorian period more broadly. People who lost a relative would dress in black for a prescribed amount of time, then in other colors such as gray and violet as they moved into half-mourning. There were fairly rigid social expectations about these mourning practices, and even the poor who couldn’t afford new clothes would often dye the ones they had black. This had the effect of making death and bereavement more visible than they are today and very much a part of everyday life.

Dickinson and Transcendentalism

The New England Transcendentalists were influenced by the currents of Romanticism in early 19th-century thought, and their philosophy was one of liberation and the wholeness of creation. They believed in the essential goodness of humanity, and championed causes such as women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery, temperance, and Unitarian religion. They also experimented with alternative living arrangements meant to get them closer to nature, such as Thoreau’s famous stay in a cottage on Walden Pond, where he wrote the book Walden. Transcendentalists looked to the realm of possibilities, emphasizing ideas, imagination, and beauty.

Dickinson was familiar with the work of the writers of the Transcendentalist movement centered in nearby Concord, Massachusetts, including Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, she didn’t fully embrace their utopian vision. She saw that while poetry “liberated the individual, it as readily left him ungrounded.”

While she wasn’t one of the Transcendentalists, Dickinson often shares a similar sensibility. Her poetry has an ecstatic quality, and it questions the order of things. Like them, she was heavily concerned with seeking freedom, as seen in these lines from “The Soul has bandaged moments”: “The soul has moments of escape - / When bursting all the doors - / She dances like a Bomb, abroad, / And swings opon the Hours”.

In addition to “a Romantic aggrandizement of the personal consciousness” (Wilner 133), she also shares the Transcendentalists’ skepticism towards organized religion, as we’ll see. 

Dickinson’s Christianity

In her poetry, Dickinson frequently expresses Christian themes such as a belief in an afterlife and the immortality of the soul. Although she was broadly aligned with Christian belief, Dickinson expressed ambivalence about the extreme religiosity that overtook her region–and some members of her inner circle–during a religious revival. 

In 1850, she wrote:

“Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have answered…and I am standing alone in rebellion, and growing very careless. Abby, Mary, Jane, and farthest of all my Vinnie [Dickinson’s friends] have been seeking, and they all believe they have found; I can’t tell you what they have found, but they think it is something precious. I wonder if it is?”

Although Dickinson had mixed feelings about the fiery brand of Protestantism sweeping the nation, critic Eleanor Wilmer writes that in Dickinson’s poetry, “each emotion is threatened by its wearing out, every action by her Puritan sense of the irrevocable, of dire consequence,” and this can be seen in the many little deaths she faces head-on in her work. Wilmer goes on to say, “[h]er bleak view is that of the Calvinist, that looks for neither forgiveness nor second chance” (127).

We can certainly see this sense of resignation in poems like “Because I could not stop for Death,” in which death is a foregone conclusion. It’s just a matter of accepting it and moving on to the next life–whatever it entails. As the critic Northrop Frye wrote, quoted in Wilmer, “Puritan to the last, she even faced the possibility that the spirit of life within her might turn out to be Death” (133).

For her, “God .. cannot be imaged,” and she speaks of God as an “eclipse” (141). For all the underlying Christian themes, there is very little explicit mention of faith in Dickinson’s body of work. At the same time, her sensibility was deeply informed by the beliefs she was raised with.  With her “Puritan idea of renunciation necessary for … aristocratic election, she can fly, but she cannot dive … into the realms of instinct and sensuality” (143).

Dickinson’s relationship with religion was complex, and it evolved throughout her lifetime. Although the Puritan sensibility she was raised with informs her writing at times, there is also a sense of doubt that emerges in, for example, “I heard a fly buzz - when I died -”.

Dickinson’s “Verbal Alchemy” and Morbid Contemplations

As Dickinson aged, her fascination with death only grew. Wilner writes: “In her fear of death, she constantly invoked it, recreated it, rehearsed it, even revelled in it” (132). There is a sense of playfulness and glee in much of her poetry about death, the “audible cackle of the survivor” (132). In writing about death, she is able to exert power over it. 

Dickinson sometimes figured her poetry as a kind of black magic or alchemy, a powerful force that can influence emotion, “a lighting rod to gather enormous powers (133). She writes:

The absence of the Witch does not

Invalidate the spell –

The embers of a Thousand Years

Uncovered by the Hand

That fondled them when they were Fire

Will stir and understand –

(1383)

In these lines, Dickinson expresses the belief that poetry has the power to transmit meaning and emotion no matter how much time has passed. She casts herself in the role of witch, whose words are an incantation capable of producing magical effects and transcending mortality.

Conclusion: Dickinson’s Many Deaths

“I have dared to do strange things–bold things” Dickinson wrote in a letter to a friend. She followed her own path, unconcerned with literary fashion or the whims of publishers and audiences. The result is a collection of astoundingly original poems that pulse with vitality, even–or especially–as they contemplate mortality. 

Her poetic meditations on death embraced it as an agent of change, even as her lines achieved the kind of “immortality” she often ascribed to the human soul. Dickinson’s death poems allow us to see how she conceived of life, change, faith, and eternity, through the lens of confronting mortality. Each time you read them, you are forced to “stop for Death” and emerge with a renewed understanding of life. 

Works Cited

“American Transcendentalism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Eleanore Lewis Lambert, “Emily Dickinson’s Joke about Death,” Studies in American Humor 27 (2013): 7-32.

Eleanor Wilner, “The Poetics of Emily Dickinson,” ELH 38.1 (1971): 126-154. 

Eliza Richards, “‘Death’s Surprise, Stamped Visible’: Emily Dickinson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Civil War Photography,” American Studies 54.1 (2009): 13-33.

“Emily Dickinson,” Poetry Foundation.

Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death” on Poetry Foundation.

Emily Dickinson, “The Soul has Bandaged moments -” on Poetry Foundation.

Mike Kelly, “The Manuscripts of Emily Dickinson,” The Public Domain Review, 2013.