Using Creatures of Flight to Explore the Mind-Body Relationship and Transcendence in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Abstract

Emily Dickinson is recognized as one of the most illustrious American poets of all time, famous for her explorations of profound concepts surrounding the mind and body life and death and. Yet in doing so, she does not simply paint binary understandings of the universe, but also makes evident that these dualities are not to be simply reconciled either. This literary and philosophical approach is captured in various symbolic forms throughout Dickinson’s poetry, and I chose to focus on the recurring appearance of flying creatures, namely birds, bees, and angels. By first sitting down and reading hundreds of her poems in order to take a top-down approach that was thus less biased in its analysis, I pieced together what I thought were notable themes and consistencies amongst each distinct category of creature in order to weave a greater, transcendent image of how Dickinson views the world.