2. Abstract
In this paper, the writer tries to analyze a poem,
entitled “I Cannot Live With You” written by Emily
Dickinson. The purpose of this writing is to appreciate
and analyze the using of imagery in the poem. To
analyze the poem, the writer uses the theory of imagery.
From analyzing the poem, the writer wants to share the
expression that is contained in the poem. It can be
concluded that the poem is easier to understand by
knowing the imagery inside the poem.
Keywords: Imagery, expression
3. Introduction
Poetry is an act of expressing the feelings that is written,
but it contains a lot of meaning beyond its form. It might
seem as simple, but it can send sigh, feel, smell, and other
components of human senses to the readers. According to
A Handbook of Literature by C. Hugh Holman, “Poetry is
the term applied to the many forms in which human beings
have given rythmyc expression to their most imaginative
and intense perceptions of the world, themselves, and the
interrelationship of the two” (1984:341).
According to this definition, a poem can be analyzed to
understand the messages in it. The writer has chosen the
poem titled “I Cannot Live With You” to be analyzed as the
object of study.
4. Theory
Imagery
Imagery is used to explain the sense experience which is drawn
through language. It transfers the feeling from the author to the
readers, so the readers can comprehend fully what the author is trying
to explain in the poem. The essential thing in analyzing poem is
imagery, so the existence of imagery cannot put aside. As stated in the
book entitled Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama
by X.J Kennedy, “Imagery means a word of sequence of world that
refers to any sensory experience” (1933:465). There are some different
kinds of imagery such as visual imagery, auditory imagery, olfactory
imagery, gustatory imagery, tactile imagery, and kinesthetic imagery
but, there are only 3 kinds that the writer is going to discuss.
Visual Imagery
Visual imagery needs the capability of the eye capturing what it
sees. This kind of imagery is the most frequent type of imagery, used to
recreate a certain image. For example in Joshua Sylvester’s poetry,
Autumnus in stanza 1 line 1-2 “When the leaves in autumn wither, with
a tawny tanned face”. The leaves “wither” and “a tawny tanned face” can
be seen by our eyes to describe the process and how it looks like.
5. Organic Imagery
Organic imagery concentrates on recreating internal
sensation that only can be felt inside someone’s body, such
as hunger, happy, calm, or sad. For example in Robert
Frost’s poetry, Birches in stanza 1 line 45-46 “It’s when I
weary of consideration, And life is too much like a pathless
wood”. There is “weary of” explaining the feeling of
boredom from “I” which it can only be felt only by “I”.
Kinesthetic Imagery
Kinesthetic Imagery clarifies the description that
there is movement or action. For example in Alfred, Lord
Tennyson’s poetry, The Eagle in stanza 1 line 6 “And like a
thunderbolt he falls”. There is “falls” in this line which
explains action that is done.
6. Biography and Poetry
Biography
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in
Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Throughout her
life, she seldom left her home and visitors were few. The people
with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous
impact on her poetry. She was particularly stirred by the
Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she first met on a trip to
Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her
home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to
the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that
followed. While it is certain that he was an important figure in
her life, it is not clear that their relationship was romantic—she
called him “my closest earthly friend.” Other possibilities for the
unrequited love that was the subject of many of Dickinson’s
poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court
judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican.
7. By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost complete isolation from the outside
world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She
spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson,
was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one
term. Her brother, Austin, who attended law school and became an attorney,
lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia,
also lived at home for her entire life in similar isolation. Lavinia and Austin
were not only family, but intellectual companions for Dickinson during her
lifetime.
Dickinson’s poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of
seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation
and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town, which encouraged a
Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity.
She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as
John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her
contemporary Walt Whitman by rumors of its disgracefulness, the two poets
are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a
uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a
poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly
recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published
posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
8. Upon her death, Dickinson’s family discovered forty handbound
volumes of nearly 1,800 poems, or “fascicles” as they are
sometimes called. Dickinson assembled these booklets by
folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and
copying what seem to be final versions of poems. The
handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various
sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were
initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of
her many early editors, who removed her unusual and varied
dashes, replacing them with traditional punctuation. The
current standard version of her poems replaces her dashes with
an en-dash, which is a closer typographical approximation to her
intention. The original order of the poems was not restored until
1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the
paper itself to restore her intended order, relying on smudge
marks, needle punctures, and other clues to reassemble the
packets. Since then, many critics have argued that there is a
thematic unity in these small collections, rather than their order
being simply chronological or convenient. The Manuscript
Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1981) is the only
volume that keeps the order intact.
9. Poetry
I Cannot Live With You
Emily Dickison
I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –
Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –
I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –
And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death’s privilege?
Nor could I rise – with You –
10. Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ –
That New Grace
Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –
They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –
Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –
And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –
So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –
11. Discussion
Life in this world: stanzas 1-3
Why an't they live together? Because it would be "life," but life
which is confined or restricted. She uses the metaphor of life as
porcelain locked up by the sexton (sexton: a church official
whose duties include maintaining church property, digging
graves, ringing the church bells). She refers to being together in
this world as "our life," a life locked up, not free, without passion
or expression.
The reference to the sexton combined with the religious
references in the rest of the poem may signify the restrictiveness
and narrowness of conventional religion, which "kill." The cup
reference can be read as a reference to communion and would
have been a familiar association for Dickinson and her
community. The cup metaphor is expanded from the sexton to
the housewife, who prefers Sevres (Sevres: fine porcelain made in
the French town of Sevres). This extension to the housewife
suggests that the conditions and values of society. "It would be
life," mean, "Living together would be real life, but it would not
be art."
12. Dying together: stanzas 4-5
They can't die together because she has to perform the last act which the living perform for the dead,
closing his eyes. She knows that impossible for his to performing that act for her. On the other hand,
she cannot continue living once he dies; she uses metaphors of cold ("frost" and "freeze") for death.
She regards death as her "right" and a "privilege," thereby making death a desirable state.
Nevertheless, because death would separate them, their dying together is impossible.
Resurrection together: stanzas 6-7
The Grace referred to can be seen as Jesus's promise that the dead will rise from their graves to life
everlasting. Her lover's face would outshine Jesus's. In addition, she would be homesick unless her
beloved were near her. So resurrection together is impossible.
Final Judgment together: stanzas 8-11
She imagines he would be saved, because he served or tried to serve God; she did not, implying that
she would probably not be saved. One reading of "saturated sight" is that she could see only him (that
is, she cares only for or is completely absorbed in him); consequently, she does not care for the glories
of Paradise. It is surprising, that she describes Paradise as "sordid." Sordid, today, generally means
dirty or depressingly wretched; an older meaning is having an inferior nature. Paradise is sordid in
comparison to the joys of her relationship with her beloved. She will not accept heaven without him,
and she regards any separation from him as itself hell.
Living apart: stanza 12
The only possibility left is to live apart, a partially open door allowing their only contact. "Oceans"
suggests a great separation physically; turning to prayer would seem to be futile in view of her
rejection of resurrection and paradise. All that is left to support them in their love is despair.
The last stanza is emphasizes the idea of the stanza, their separation; also it gives the impression of a
long or stretched out time for her loneliness and aloneness.
13. Conclusion
This poem has been praised as her best love poem and
may well be her most famous love poem. In this
heavily ironic poem, the final expression and measure
of the intensity of her love is her despair at the
lovers having to remain apart.
The poem is organized by the various lives they can't
share: they can't live together in this world; they can't
die together; they can't rise after death together; they
can't be judged by God together, whether destined for
heaven or not. All they can do is maintain the
possibility of communication (the partially open
door), though "oceans" apart. Prayer or God offers no
comfort or hope; all they have is the "pale sustenance"
(not a nourishing food), which is despair.
14. References
Holmann, C. Hugh. 1985. A Handbook to Literature.
Indianapolis: ITT Bobbs- Merrill Educational Publishing
Company, Inc.
Perrine, Laurence., Thomas R. Arp. 1992. Sound and Sense: An
Introduction to Poetry. United States of America: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
Abrams., Ford., Daiches. 1890. The Norton Anthology of
English Literature Volume 2. England: W. W. Norton and
Company.
Echols, John M., Hassan Shadili. 2000. Kamus Inggris
Indonesia. Jakarta: Gramedia.
Kennedy, X.J. 1933. Literature : An Introduction to Fiction
Poetry and Drama. US : Exlibus.
