Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson

“For months, for years, for most of my life, I have been hovering like an insect against the screens of an existence which inhabited Amherst, Massachusetts between 1830 and 1886. The methods, the exclusions of Emily Dickinson’s existence could not have been my own; yet more and more, as a woman poet finding my own methods, I have come to understand her necessities, could have been witness in her defense.”

In this passage, Adrienne Rich introduces a recurring simile in which she compares herself and her fixation on Emily Dickinson to an insect hovering against a screen. This simile demonstrates how extensively Rich has studied Dickinson throughout her life, establishing the author’s ethos, or her credibility in speculating about Dickinson’s character. Rich also appeals to ethos by emphasizing not only her shared geography but also her shared experience with Dickinson as a woman poet.

“Given her vocation, she was neither eccentric nor quaint; she was determined to survive, to use her powers, to practice necessary economies.”

Through appeals to logos, or logical reasoning, Rich deconstructs popular caricatures of Emily Dickinson. Rich demystifies the poet’s secluded life to argue that Dickinson’s isolation was a necessary tactic in pursuing her passion and honing her craft.

“It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment—that explodes in poetry.”

Rich uses hyperbole to demonstrate how Dickinson’s inner thoughts and feelings emerged, or “exploded,” in her writing; this expression of the subconscious is key to Rich’s conceptualization of The Relationship Between Poet and Poem. Rich’s use of the pronoun “us” also hints at the similarities Rich shares with Dickinson as a woman poet who wrote about her most personal experiences, further establishing the connection between them.