Poem Of The Week

Exclusion

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door;

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariots pausing

At her low gate;

Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling

Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation

Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention

Like stone.

By Emily Dickinson

Exclusion : Song Of A Safeguarding Stoic

Emily Dickinson wrote about 1,775 poems and the majority of them are distilled with a dualistic quality of exixtence, soul and body. It seems she is sitting at the border of the mundane and metaphysical world and caging her thoughts in words. She is quite aware of the transience of life and so language hardly matters for her.

An honest language filled with dashes makes her pause for a brief moment, it seems she has stopped suddenly after deeping in the mysteries of life. To escape the futility of life she creates evanescence for her and for it she tooks help of stark nude language which appears syntactically eccentric. The poetic devices anaphora, simile, imageries, rhymes are used profusely in her writings.

In this poem exclusion in initiating lines rhyme scheme abab ia used--SOCIETY / MAJORITY, DORE/MORE.

GATE/MAT are pararhymes while we see an example of embedded rhyme in the last lines of poem ONE/STONE.

She emphasizes upon keeping the soul out of the clutch of mundane life which is filled with momentary bliss. Charitos, emperors don't matter to her as they are nothing but an illusionary escape !

And after making a divine society of common thoughts one should be rigid like hard stoic, never letting enter any chimeric sensualities which bring nothing but only agony. The closing of the valve-- she wants to tell that one should fully safeguard oneself against any intrution.

Dr pragya Suman