酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

Poem of The Week

Poem Text of The Bustle in a House by Emily Dickinson


The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth

The Sweeping up the Heart,
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity


Review

For any informed reader of Dickinson’s life and poetry, it is no small wonder that the recurring themes in her work are death and mourning. And she has never failed her readers and always surprised them by using all sorts of literary devices, including sentence structure, punctuation, imagery, figurative language, and capitalization to convey the loss and pain one experiences when a loved one passes away.

The Bustle in a House is such a poem, skilfully and disinterestedly portraying something that almost all of us will be forced to deal with at some time in our life. It describes the aftermath of the loss of a loved one. In the poem, Dickinson vividly depicts a personified house in an unexpected way that it gets very busy the morning after a death and continues to function normally. She also has heavy use of symbolism (all the capitalized words) to show how man should be like a house, and to suggest that man must accept death as it comes and not mourn over the loss. The poem implies that the only way for us to overcome the loss is to put aside “the Heart” and “Love” that we once had “Until Eternity”. Here the word “Eternity” is a symbol for the next world, and death is viewed as the beginning of a new life.

Structurally speaking, The Bustle in a House is a short narrative poem with two stanzas of four lines. Each stanza is made up of a single sentence with no punctuation marks. These structural factors add up to make the poem have a lively and quick pace. This type of pace seems to suggest that after the loss of our loved one, we should behave like a house, where it continues to function normally and dutifully in society, and carry on our daily tasks and move on with our life. In terms of contents and structure, The Bustle in a House is written in a serious, yet calm tone, not despairing over the loss of a loved one.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Poem of The Week

Poem Text of The Bustle in a House by Emily Dickinson


The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth

The Sweeping up the Heart,
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity


Review

For any informed reader of Dickinson’s life and poetry, it is no small wonder that the recurring themes in her work are death and mourning. And she has never failed her readers and always surprised them by using all sorts of literary devices, including sentence structure, punctuation, imagery, figurative language, and capitalization to convey the loss and pain one experiences when a loved one passes away.

The Bustle in a House is such a poem, skilfully and disinterestedly portraying something that almost all of us will be forced to deal with at some time in our life. It describes the aftermath of the loss of a loved one. In the poem, Dickinson vividly depicts a personified house in an unexpected way that it gets very busy the morning after a death and continues to function normally. She also has heavy use of symbolism (all the capitalized words) to show how man should be like a house, and to suggest that man must accept death as it comes and not mourn over the loss. The poem implies that the only way for us to overcome the loss is to put aside “the Heart” and “Love” that we once had “Until Eternity”. Here the word “Eternity” is a symbol for the next world, and death is viewed as the beginning of a new life.

Structurally speaking, The Bustle in a House is a short narrative poem with two stanzas of four lines. Each stanza is made up of a single sentence with no punctuation marks. These structural factors add up to make the poem have a lively and quick pace. This type of pace seems to suggest that after the loss of our loved one, we should behave like a house, where it continues to function normally and dutifully in society, and carry on our daily tasks and move on with our life. In terms of contents and structure, The Bustle in a House is written in a serious, yet calm tone, not despairing over the loss of a loved one.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

Emily Dickinson is viewed as one of major American poets of loss, and she was not only intellectually but also emotionally familiar with the kind of pain and loss expressed in her poetry. Her father, mother, nephew, and three close friends, all died within an eight-year period.

For anyone who is interested in her dealing with the loss of a loved one, one can read christine’s review of her another poem, I never lost as much but twice, on this issue at http://coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=37097 .


What follows is another version of The Bustle in a House:

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, -

The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Emily Dickinson is viewed as one of major American poets of loss, and she was not only intellectually but also emotionally familiar with the kind of pain and loss expressed in her poetry. Her father, mother, nephew, and three close friends, all died within an eight-year period.

For anyone who is interested in her dealing with the loss of a loved one, one can read christine’s review of her another poem, I never lost as much but twice, on this issue at http://coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=37097 .


What follows is another version of The Bustle in a House:

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, -

The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[星子]

Thank you for sharing your wonderful work.

It is really helpful to understand Emily's poems.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

Thank you for sharing your wonderful work.

It is really helpful to understand Emily's poems.
_________________

[christine]

[[christine]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

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