Editor's Choice
Can you explicate Emily Dickinson's poem "This Was a Poet—It is That"?
Quick answer:
Emily Dickinson's poem "This Was a Poet—It is That" explores the unique ability of poets to extract profound meaning from ordinary objects, likening this process to creating a fragrant oil ("Attar"). Poets are described as "Disclosers" who reveal hidden significance, making others realize their own limited perception. The poem contrasts the poet's timeless, intangible wealth of perception with the mundane understanding of non-poets.
Dickinson's poem is, of course, about poets and their art. Poets are able to distill a heady fragrance ("Attar") from "the familiar species / That perished by the Door." This can mean that poets turn everyday things into objects filled with meaning, but it is characteristic of Dickinson to use an oblique image of death to make this point: it's not clear what "familiar species" has "perished," but the idea is that out of the triviality of death, the poet is able to make something sublime. This split between the ordinariness of life and the heightened experience of poetry is returned to in the third and fourth stanzas. In the third stanza, the poet ("the Discloser") impoverishes ("entitles") everyone else ("us") through the power of their "picture" or imagery . This suggests a second sort of split—an internal one within Dickinson herself (her use of "us" suggests that the poet...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
Dickinson is at odds with the person Dickinson, who is like the reader). In the final stanza, the work of the poet is at once a kind of "robbery," but one the "us" from the third stanza are "unconscious" of.
Looking at the final stanza in detail:
Of portion—so unconscious—
This line refers to the "portion" of meaning the poet has discovered, of which most people are unconscious (or the meaning itself is unconscious of its value, perhaps).
The Robbing—could not harm—
"Robbing" I read as the poetic act, the extraction of meaning from everyday things.
Himself—to Him—a Fortune—
The "himself" refers to Dickinson the person, one of "us" who is not "harmed" by the "robbery," while the "him" is the Poet (Dickinson, despite the masculine pronoun) who has stolen a "Fortune" in meaning.
Exterior—to Time—
This "Fortune" is "exterior" to time—that is, beyond death—because it will endure as art.
This poem is about poets and poetry. She defines what a “Poet” is (notice the capital letter) – one that is able to “distill amazing sense from ordinary Meanings (again, note the capital). The capital letters emphasize the importance of the words. What else is a Poet? An “attar so immense” – an attar is an odor, and this odor is from a “familiar species” – in this case, I believe she is referring to, again, “ordinary meanings.” So, a Poet is able to create something beautiful out of something simple.
A Poet can take his/her readers to an entirely different world through words. A beautiful poem forces one to look right at it – it captures you. It points out the poverty of the world outside of the beauty of poetry (Poverty –of portion). Realizing the beauty of poetry can be almost unconscious but once we realize it, it is with us forever, no one can steal it from us, because it is an image in our mind. Poetry is timeless – (exterior to Time).