Emily Dickinson vs. Louise Erdrich

Emily Dickinson writes her poems in a form that is simple, yet still evokes sadness as well as other emotions within the reader. Her poem, "They Shut Me Up In Prose," speaks of someone who is in captivity. Someone who is being held against her own wishes by someone she may or may not want to be with. However, Dickinson also speaks as if this person could free herself if she so desired. She writes, “Still! Could themself have peeped– And seen my Brain– go round– They might as wise had lodged a bird For treason– in the pound–“ I feel like she is saying that this girl has the brains to free herself, yet for some reason, she keeps herself trapped.

On the idea of Captivity, Louise Erdrich wrote a world famous poem entitled “Captivity.”  This poem I feel is similar to Dickinson’s in several ways; the first is that it mostly keeps in rhythm with iambic pentameter. Most of Dickinson’s poem to keep to this beat, however, I feel as if They Shut Me Up In Prose does not consistently follow this beat. Dickinson and Erdrich also mention birds in their poems. Birds always seem to represent freedom, to me, and to for both writers to mention birds within their poems about captivity, I find ironic. I feel as if captivity means to be trapped, unable to see outside, often times unable to move; yet somehow, I feel like these writers make it to be something that the people within the poem can free themselves from. Freedom is a feeling that comes when someone or something has been rescued from the grip of something else. Freedom is only a feeling that can be felt deep within one’s soul; it may be visible on their face, or it may not.  

"Captivity"

The stream was swift, and so cold   

I thought I would be sliced in two.   

But he dragged me from the flood   

by the ends of my hair.

I had grown to recognize his face.

I could distinguish it from the others.   

There were times I feared I understood   

his language, which was not human,   

and I knelt to pray for strength.

We were pursued by God’s agents   

or pitch devils, I did not know.

Only that we must march.

Their guns were loaded with swan shot.

I could not suckle and my child’s wail   

put them in danger.

He had a woman

with teeth black and glittering.   

She fed the child milk of acorns.

The forest closed, the light deepened.

I told myself that I would starve

before I took food from his hands   

but I did not starve.

One night

he killed a deer with a young one in her   

and gave me to eat of the fawn.

It was so tender,

the bones like the stems of flowers,   

that I followed where he took me.   

The night was thick. He cut the cord   

that bound me to the tree.

After that the birds mocked.

Shadows gaped and roared

and the trees flung down

their sharpened lashes.

He did not notice God’s wrath.

God blasted fire from half-buried stumps.

I hid my face in my dress, fearing He would burn us all   

but this, too, passed.

Rescued, I see no truth in things.   

My husband drives a thick wedge   

through the earth, still it shuts   

to him year after year.

My child is fed of the first wheat.   

I lay myself to sleep

on a Holland-laced pillowbeer.   

I lay to sleep.

And in the dark I see myself   

as I was outside their circle.

They knelt on deerskins, some with sticks,   

and he led his company in the noise   

until I could no longer bear

the thought of how I was.

I stripped a branch

and struck the earth,

in time, begging it to open

to admit me

as he was

and feed me honey from the rock.

Louise Erdrich, “Captivity” from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems. Copyright © 2003 by Louise Erdrich.