Emily Dickinson 280

The first time I read Emily Dickinson’s poem 280, I visualized the speaker to be pressing her ear to wooden floorboards, straining to listen in on the funeral taking place in the room beneath her. All of her concentration goes into the act of listening. She feels every vibration from the scene below. The mourners tread to and fro; the rhythms of the eulogist’s speech beat against the ceiling like a drum; the coffin creaks as the pallbearers carry it away to the burial ground. Her ear presses the floor so hard that a plank breaks under the pressure, and she falls through the barrier that separates her from the funeral: “And I dropped down, and down--” (18).
I thought the poem might be about clearing all distractions from consciousness except for the important bodily senses. Lines 19 and 20, “And hit a World, at every plunge,/ And finished knowing--then--” bring to mind the vast amounts of knowledge to be gained with every breakthrough of understanding brought by the clarity of the senses.
This was just my initial reaction, based mostly on assumption. I went back after this initial reading to see if my hypothesis held up to poetic scrutiny. I read the poem aloud slowly, trying to emphasize each punctuation mark in a logical, rhythmic manner. In each sentence, I put verbal emphasis on words beginning with capital letters. I paused for about one second on each comma, then paused for about three seconds on each dash. I noticed there are no periods. There is no sense of finality in any of the stanzas. Each stanza ends with a dash, except for the third stanza, which has a comma as its final punctuation mark. The third lines of stanzas one and two are anchored with one repeating word. The first stanza has “treading--treading” while the second stanza has “beating--beating.” I am not quite sure what to make of this repetition, but it might be similar to the echo that the speaker hears through the barrier.
The enjambed sentiment of lines three and four, “--till it seemed/ That sense was breaking through--” makes me wonder about my initial hypothesis. Is it possible that it only seems that the senses are being put to use in this poem? There are a few words that stick out to me in the poem. “Sense” (4), “Mind” (8), “Heavens” (11), “Reason” (17), “World” (19), and “Finished” (20). The scattering of these words, which are each abstract and concrete at the same time, indicates some connection between them all. Or maybe it indicates a separation between them. Or maybe a sequence of events that plays out by jumping from one to the next. It is very difficult for me to determine their relationship, but I feel that they all rely on each other somehow.
In this poem, there is also the issue of loss of control. The speaker is not taking control of the action in this poem, but only feeling it. It is “they” who are carrying out the action. In the first three stanzas, “they” tread to and fro, “they” take their seats, “they” lift a box. “They” disappear after the third stanza, but the speaker does not achieve autonomy because of their absence. When the speaker drops down through the “Plank in Reason” (17), it does not appear to be her choice to fall. She is completely at the mercy of some outside presence or reality.
I cannot come to any conclusions about this poem. It is very difficult to reach a conclusion about a poem that seems both so finite and so infinite. I cannot tell whether it is about life or death. I know the poem has the potential to go on. It does not end with any sense of finality for the reader, though the speaker “Finished knowing--” (20). I suppose that what is so intriguing about this poem is the prospect that something comes after the attainment of knowledge. The poet leaves the door open for possibility after the assets of Sense, Mind, Reason, and World have been extinguished. What lies beyond?