Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.
|
This poem is a definition poem; she wrote a number of poems defining words. A presentiment is a
foreboding, a feeling that something is about to happen, usually something unpleasant or evil.
Dickinson uses the metaphor of a shadow to define a
presentiment. Except for the first two words, the entire poem describes the shadow. It is described so
concretely that an inattentive reader might think the poem was only a description of the shadow. The key
to understanding this poem is to apply the details describing the shadow to a presentiment or premonition. How is a
presentiment like a long shadow?
A long shadow appears before the person or thing casting it; so a presentiment gives
warning or appears before the event. A long shadow indicates a setting sun; a presentiment may indicate death (the
setting sun is a common symbol for death, and Dickinson uses it in this way in other poems). Grass is
startled by the warning, just as an individual is startled by the foreboding. The warning is that darkness
(something harmful or deadly?) is "about to pass" or happen.
She uses present tense to capture the sense of imminence (imminence: impending evil,
some danger about to happen). Present tense indicates that the danger is not safely past or over.
Please just look at the first line of the poem; don't think about meaning. Question: What do you
notice about its appearance?
Answer: It is considerably longer than the other three lines in the poem; Dickinson is duplicating the length
of a shadow in the length of her line.
Dickinson also uses sounds to achieve her effects. What words alliterate in line 1? Does the alliteration emphasize
important words/ideas, or has made a mistake in alliterating these words? She uses a pattern of s sounds. Find all the words that
contain s, regardless of its position in the word. Has she emphasized and connected
important words and ideas by repeating a sound? The s sound can achieve a number of
different effects: it may create a feeling of softness, suggest hush and silence, or remind us of the hissing of a snake. (You may have
noticed that softness, hush, silence, hiss all contain s.) Do you think Dickinson used s to
achieve a special effect, or is their presence merely coincidence?
|
