Emily Dickinson | Death Leaves Us Homesick, Who Behind
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010The following poem by Dickinson attempts to explore the emotions those of us feel who have lost a loved one. Dickinson likens feelings of bereavement to that of homesickness, as if to say the departed are like a home which we are far away from and cannot get to. Her observations, I think, are well-reasoned. Furthermore, she elaborates on her homesick metaphor in the second stanza by characterizing how we, “who behind”, continue to grieve — by going to the former “Places” of our loved ones’ lives. Sadly, Dickinson’s final words of this poem couldn’t be more true as she poetically states we can only continue searching and visiting those places, for those we lost we can never truly find again in this life. (more…)
