A Prison gets to be a friend -- - A poem by Emily Dickinson

A Prison gets to be a friend -- Between its Ponderous face And Ours -- a Kinsmanship express -- And in its narrow Eyes -- We come to look with gratitude For the appointed Beam It deal us -- stated as our food -- And hungered for -- the same -- We learn to know the Planks -- That answer to Our feet -- So miserable a sound -- at first -- Nor ever now -- so sweet -- As plashing in the Pools -- When Memory was a Boy -- But a Demurer Circuit -- A Geometric Joy -- The Posture of the Key That interrupt the Day To Our Endeavor -- Not so real The Check of Liberty -- As this Phantasm Steel -- Whose features -- Day and Night -- Are present to us -- as Our Own -- And as escapeless -- quite -- The narrow Round -- the Stint -- The slow exchange of Hope -- For something passiver -- Content Too steep for lookinp up -- The Liberty we knew Avoided -- like a Dream -- Too wide for any Night but Heaven -- If That -- indeed -- redeem --

Poet: Emily Dickinson
Poem: 652. A Prison gets to be a friend --
Volume: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Year: Published/Written in 1955

Comment 1 of 1, added on November 7th, 2004 at 12:16 AM.

First off this poem was not written in 1955. That is proabably the publishing date for a book from which this was taken.
Emily Dickinson was well-known for being a recluse. From 1865 and on she stayed in her bedroom writing and never left her father's house. She never married. This poem is about her room; she has come to terms with her imprisonment (which was self-imposed by the way) and is ritualizing her behavoirs within the room. On the other hand, as is made clear by the last stanza, the prison is a metaphor for the body, spocifically her female body. As a poet, she is in a double bind( not my expression) she is both wary of transgressing gender roles while willing to assert her poetic (phallic) power. Thus the prison metaphor for her body: " features day amd night/Are present to us as our own/And as escapeless quite." The plural pronoun "us" is in regards to the split personalities Dickinson often employed; often masculine, but usually in regards to splits between an I for the soul and an I for the brain and an I for the body.

mimi from Canada

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