I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -“
Emily Dickinson’s famous mood of depression and anger are the key characteristics of her poetry. Using figurative language, she is able to describe complex, personal experiences (like depression, anger, and death) in a compact poem. In her poem, titled “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain,” she describes the despair and sorrows of living with depression. Her use of personifying subjective experiences, such as sense and being, allows her to say so much in so little of words. She makes her personification fairly obvious, capitalizing nouns as if they were literal names. It is simplistic, however extremely effective. Unlike many celebrated poems that require deep elaboration to fully understand, Dickinson’s simple and obvious writing makes it nearly impossible to read the poem and not feel the funeral along with her.
To read the poem in it’s full, click here.
I felt as if your blog was well written and intriguing. Your love of psychology is self evident, for everything you write seems to come back to psychology and the human mind.
Emily Dickinson is a beautiful writer but it’s evident that she also incorporates a depressing tone. I enjoyed reading this poem and the simplicity of it. Sometimes, especially for Dickinson, a little goes a long way.