Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Emily Dickinson's Writing Table in Her Bedroom at the Homestead" by Sharon Olds is a poignant exploration of memory, trauma, and the intersection of personal experience with literary history. The poem weaves together the physical presence of Emily Dickinson's writing table with the speaker's painful recollections of childhood, using vivid imagery and metaphor to connect past and present, personal and historical.

The poem opens with a seemingly mundane observation: the chair next to Emily Dickinson's writing table. However, this chair quickly becomes a symbol of the speaker's own past, specifically a traumatic incident where her parents tied her to a chair. Olds establishes a connection between the two chairs, noting they are not the same but share a common lineage, like "cousins." The reference to "Hitchcock from Connecticut" grounds the imagery in a specific historical and cultural context, linking the chair to a traditional New England craft.

The description of the chair evokes a visceral response from the speaker, as she recalls the physical sensations associated with being tied up. The "peneblum" felt in her cervical vertebra and the "swayback sways away from the lower bar" create a vivid, physical memory of discomfort and restraint. The mention of the "maze of glazed string in the seat" further emphasizes the sensory detail, highlighting the tactile memory of the chair's surface against her body.

As the poem continues, the speaker recounts how her wrists were tied to the chair's struts. However, she notes that her wrists "do not remember being tied," suggesting a partial or selective memory of the trauma. This selective memory reflects the speaker's discomfort with fully recalling the incident, indicated by her uneasiness in trying to remember. The contrast between this discomfort and the seemingly benign memory of being fed "alphabet soup" by her mother underscores the complexity of her emotional response. The alphabet soup, with its "dense message" and "intelligible manna," symbolizes a desire for knowledge and understanding, a craving for meaning amidst confusion and pain.

The speaker's experience of being alone in the room, singing "loaf-shaped quatrains from the hymnal," connects to Emily Dickinson's poetic tradition, known for its hymn-like quality. This moment of private expression contrasts with the silence the speaker adopts when others approach, indicating a suppression of her voice and creativity in the presence of others, particularly her father.

The poem takes a more introspective turn as the speaker considers her father's perspective. The image of a child tied to a chair becomes a point of reflection on parental expectations and the complexities of familial relationships. The speaker imagines that her father felt a sense of rightness in seeing her tied to the chair, suggesting his faith in her potential and his belief in discipline as a means of fostering success. The metaphor of being "a chair that grew up and spoke well and went to his college" conveys the weight of these expectations, implying that the speaker was molded into a vessel for the family's aspirations.

The metaphor of the speaker as a "maple they tapped" and a "Druid" further deepens the imagery. The speaker is seen as a source of potential sweetness, the one expected to bring something valuable and nourishing out of a difficult and oppressive environment. The final lines, "if there was to be sweetness ever come out of that house, it would have to come from me," encapsulate the burden placed on the speaker to transcend her circumstances and fulfill her family's hopes.

In "Emily Dickinson's Writing Table in Her Bedroom at the Homestead," Sharon Olds masterfully blends personal memory with literary allusion, using the figure of Emily Dickinson and the iconic writing table as a backdrop to explore themes of trauma, creativity, and familial expectation. The poem reflects on how our environments and the objects within them can carry the weight of history and memory, shaping our identities and experiences in profound ways. Through her evocative language and introspective narrative, Olds offers a nuanced meditation on the intersection of personal pain and artistic legacy.

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