I felt a Funeral, in my Brain: Key Poetic Devices

Caesura

The term caesura (say-ZHOO-ruh) refers to any interruption or break that occurs in the middle of a poetic line. Dickinson makes ample use of caesura, though she does so in unexpected and sometimes ambiguous ways. A characteristic feature of Dickinson’s poetry is her free use of punctuation, and particularly dashes. At times, Dickinson’s frequent punctuation has clear rhythmic and syntactic effects, as in lines 13–16:

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –

In these lines, Dickinson uses commas to construct a tight series of parallel statements. Just as the speaker likens “the Heavens” to “a Bell,” so too do they liken “Being” to an “Ear,” and “I” and “Silence” to “some strange Race.” The commas are necessary to make these parallelisms clear. They also serve to create variation in the rhythm of the language. Elsewhere, however, the function of the punctuation is less clear. For instance, consider line 17: “And then a Plank in Reason, broke.” The comma that appears after “Reason” unexpectedly interrupts what would otherwise be a complete sentence. There is no grammatical reason for a comma to appear there. Yet this unexpected break with grammatical reason reflects the meaning of the line, in which “a Plank in Reason” breaks and sends the speaker plummeting. Other unusual uses of caesura in the poem function in similarly idiosyncratic ways.

Conceit

The term conceit names a figure of speech that uses elaborate means to establish a parallel between two dissimilar things. In her poem, Dickinson uses the stages of a funeral as a conceit for representing a series of disorienting shifts that the speaker experiences in their inner life. Admittedly, this description sounds very similar to the definition of another common literary device: extended metaphor. Like a conceit, an extended metaphor works by establishing an association between two unlike things and then developing that association over the course of many lines. However, there is a subtle difference between these two figures. An extended metaphor makes the terms of its comparison explicit. For example, Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging” features an extended metaphor that implicitly likens the physical act of digging to the intellectual act of writing. In Dickinson’s poem, by contrast, the significance of the funeral isn’t immediately clear. Indeed, we readers must do the interpretive work to determine what we think the significance of the funeral really is. But even though the funeral’s significance isn’t obvious, what is obvious is the fact that the poem is entirely organized around the procedures of a funeral. The term for this figurative method of organizing the poem is conceit.

Metaphor

Whereas Dickinson uses the funeral as a guiding conceit for the work as a whole, she uses metaphor in more targeted ways throughout the poem. Recall that a metaphor (MEH-tuh-for) is a figure of speech that makes an implicit comparison between two unlike things. Dickinson uses metaphor to greatest effect in the fourth stanza (lines 13–16):

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –

These lines lay out a tightly constructed series of parallel metaphors. Just as the speaker likens “the Heavens” to “a Bell,” so too do they liken “Being” to an “Ear,” and “I” and “Silence” to “some strange Race.” Taken together, these parallel metaphors generate a complex image in which “Being” is passively receptive like an “Ear,” listening in “Silence” as a cosmic “Bell” resounds through “the Heavens.” Since the speaker (“I”) is also equated to “Silence,” they too are like a passively receptive “Ear.” The speaker further suggests that to be “here”—that is, to be a “Being” in this world—is to be the member of “some strange Race.” Thus, just as a typhoon might wash a castaway onto a desert island, so too does the cosmic cacophony deposit the beleaguered speaker on the shores of this world—“Wrecked, solitary, here.”

Repetition

Dickinson uses two different types of repetition in her poem. The first type of repetition is known as epizeuxis (EH-pih-ZOOK-sis), which occurs when a single word is repeated in quick succession. One key example of epizeuxis appears in the opening stanza:

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

The repetition of “treading” in line 3 places strong emphasis on the word, drawing attention to the downward press of the mourners’ feet into the ground. This repetition subtly foreshadows the downward trajectory the speaker describes in the final stanza. There they once again use repetition to emphasize the sensation of falling through a cosmic void: “And I dropped down, and down – ” (line 18). In addition to epizeuxis, Dickinson also uses a form of repetition known as anaphora (ann-AF-uh-rah), which involves the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a succession of clauses. The anaphora in the poem centers on the repetition of the word “and.” Fully half the lines in the poem begin with this word, a pattern that intensifies over the course of the poem until the final stanza (lines 17–20):

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

The increasing frequency of repetition creates a sense of urgency that subtly echoes the acceleration of the speaker’s headlong plunge into space.

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