My ‘close listening’ experience helped my interpretation of the two Emily Dickinson poems “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!” and “She Rose to His Requirement” by explaining the details. From what I’ve read from Dickinson and learned about through class, even when her general message is clear the details are almost too complex to understand. Following this pattern when reading these poems initially, attempting to understand the details was my biggest roadblock. Initially I could’ve told you that “She Rose to His Requirement” was an anti-patriarchal view of marriage in the 1800s from the perspective of a woman, but I could’ve never told you what “If aught she missed of” could’ve added to the work. I could’ve told you that “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!” was a longing for a sexual interaction, but when trying to find the gender of the speaker and how significant the sea could be, it proved very difficult before listening to the podcast. Starting with “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!” the first subject they started with was the gender of the speaker whom I initially thought was Dickinson before shifting back and forth. It was stated that it was possible that the gender “could be from …show more content…
Regarding the sea, the question was brought up of “Why at Sea and not finding her way back?” and “Why would she restrain herself if mooring means anchored to one place, the opposite of wild?” These questions changed my view of the poem by opening a new perspective of what the speaker really desired, going away to the wilderness, staying stuck, or both. In this section the quote that changed my reading of the details of the poem was, “The Heart in port is not a body in port. The Speaker is always at home in body, but always at sea in mind or soul.” The body is moored, controlled, but the mind is free and impossible to