Analysing Lyric Appeal of Emily Dickinson's Poem

‘Because I could not stop for death’ explores the inevitability of death and the uncertainties that surround what happens after people die. ‘Death’ is personified as a ‘kindly’ gentleman, who takes the reader on a mysterious journey through time. Unlike most lyric poetry, the poem was given no title by the poet. 

Dickinson incorporates her typical form, using six quatrains with each stanza representing different stages of the speaker’s symbolic journey. The thing that sets her apart from the dominant aesthetic of her time is the way she tends to break away from the pattern. What her contemporaries may have called spasmodic, imperfectly rhymed, and lacking in form, we today consider a skilful interplay of meaning and music. The bulk of the poem continues with this regular meter, although the ABCB rhyme scheme diverges into off-rhymes: ‘meimmortality’, ‘awayCivility’, ‘RingSun’, ‘chillTulle’. 

In the British tradition, the term ‘lyric’ comes to designate short, intimate poems, often written in the first person and directly expressing the speaker’s thoughts and feelings. Conversely, lyric poetry’s emphasis on interiority and individuality means that it became more and more popular from the Romantic period onward; it is the default mode of ‘modern’ or ‘bourgeois’ poetry. Dickinson’s poems are lyrics, generally defined as short poems with a single speaker, not necessarily the poet, who expresses though and feeling.  

As in most lyric poetry, the speaker in Dickinson’s poems is often identified in the first person ‘I’. In spite of this, Dickinson reminded a reader that the ‘I’ in her poetry does not necessarily speak for the poet herself: “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person”. In this poem, the ‘I’ addresses the reader as ‘you’. Another essential characteristic of lyrical poetry is in the types of moods and emotions the poem expresses. These emotions tend to lean toward the extremes in life. Appropriately, Dickinson, like much of her work, centres the poem around ‘Death’, who is ‘kind’ and ‘civil’ through personification and allusion. Dickinson incorporates a sort of humorous irony that although she ‘could not stop for death’, ‘Death’ makes time to ‘kindly stop’ for her. Humour is not traditionally associated with authentic lyric poetry, however Dickinson’s transcendental humour and irony are some of the deep sources of her popularity. Lyrics tend to follow a formal structure which dictates its form, meter and rhyme scheme. One of the most common meters used in lyric poetry is iambic meter, which Dickinson skilfully incorporates into the poem. The form’s strong rhythmic pattern contributes to the poem’s musicality, depicting a typically lyrical quality.

Overall, without elaborate philosophy, yet with irresistible ways of expression, Dickinson’s poems have true lyric appeal, because they make abstractions, such as love, hope, loneliness, death and immortality, seem near, intimate and faithful.