“Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” » by Emily Dickinson is as enigmatic as it is condensed. Most critics agree that it is an essentially erotic poem, but interpretations vary widely within this shared recognition of its eroticism. There is disagreement as to what motivated Dickinson's eros, to whom or what she directed that motivation, and even as to the feelings she attempted to convey. With criticism running the gamut – from saying the poem evokes "the quiet, even regressive, consequences of orgiastic liberation" (Pollack, 185), to calling it "homoerotic" (Farr, 223) – it is impossible to imagine a definitive answer. reading on which everyone can reach a consensus. Nonetheless, to anyone who felt the underlying emotional tension in “Wild Nights!” » by Dickinson! it seems incongruous to hear James L. Dean describe the poem as "less provocative" (92) simply because the final "You" is perhaps addressed to the metaphorical sea rather than to any particular lover. To arrive at this conclusion, one would have to assume that an anticipated romantic tryst between individuals is somehow more provocative than a seething sexual tension that arises from nature directly into the human psyche. This suggests a reader more concerned with voyeuristic imagery than with deeper questions of desire, and who, ultimately, might be better served reading bawdy limericks than pondering Dickinson's words. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayJames L. Dean is no stranger to Emily Dickinson or “Wild Nights!” In fact, in his essay in the Winter 1993 Explanator, Dean tells us that he has thought about the poem enough over the years to "have eight or nine thoughts about it" (91). This is probably why he asks such good questions to help us with the analysis, and why his ideas on various aspects of the poem are so compelling. It's all the more disconcerting because his words lead almost precisely to the emotional nerve that animates the poem's voice before it wanders away and crashes into one of its own fantasies. Dean makes important points -- he identifies the metaphorical sea, examines the speaker's relationship with Eden, and discusses what he sees as a paradox of mooring in the wild sea -- but in each case his analysis suffers from a sort of myopic march towards a conclusion that the poet never intended. While Dean has his eyes fixed on a wild sexual liaison that will take place "Tonight", Emily Dickinson's gaze extends further. “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” is an expression of erotic desire so integral to human nature that the poet connected it to the larger natural world out of necessity. Instead of humming in hungry contemplation of an impending rendezvous, Dickinson's poem expresses a quality of unfulfilled passion that no earthly Eden, nor any "Tonight," can ever satisfy. Dean sees the "sea" as the source and siren of passion, thus concluding it is the place where "the passionate nature is unleashed" (92) -- this is partly true, but somehow Another, he never makes the link between the potential for irrational tumult of the sea and the chaotic need for the speaker's voice. There is a jerk in the poem as it moves from the cry of luxury in the first stanza to the apparent departure and respite of the second stanza, and finally to desire in the second line of the final stanza. This conveys a corresponding jerk of emotion - the speaker can't even stay consistent during the final stanza sothat she suddenly looks from Eden to the sea. When Dean considers the sea only as a place for the wild heart to unleash, he fails to convey to us that the speaker is intimate with its underlying tumult, that in fact, all the forces working to throw a sea into crisis are the same. forces which also act in his heart. Dean points out the poem's symbolic parallels between the human heart and the passionate nature of the sea, but attributes them only to the latter – he sees "the lawless, the dark, the menacing and the wild" (93), but simply as things the speaker seeks, not as aspects of his own being inseparable from his nature. Blinded by his own imagined lens of a particular sexual "Tonight," Dean misses the boldest image here, one that shows us a fundamentally wild female passion, as infinitely rich and powerful as the sea Dickinson uses as a metaphor. . Far from being the least provocative, this reading has implications that strike at the heart of sexual notions in our culture, and which certainly ignore the Victorian attitudes of the poet's time. Dean's reading of line 9, "Rowing in Eden," includes the thought, "there might even be a slight disparagement of Eden as tame, depending on the tone we feel" (93). If we take into account the seething speculation of the first stanza, and then read line 10 as a sudden reflection away from Eden and towards this lawless sea, Eden seems not only tame, but suffocating and oppressive. Looking at the poem through Dean's eyes, it is understandable that he sees taming rather than oppression - taming fits his more superficial idea of ​​a speaker longing for a particular diversionary appointment to satisfy his hunger, while to feel oppression, Dean would have to feel the inner conflict of a limitless passion trapped in the idea of ​​another's paradise. While Dean believes that "rowing in Eden may involve great happiness [but not] danger or substantial expenditure of energy" (93), he completely misses the boat by not fully recognizing the irony he initially suggests . The speaker is not satisfied with Eden, it is not a paradise she has created, and what's more, the act of rowing is anything but pleasurable and effortless - in fact, most rowers will discover that what was originally splendid and full of adventure soon becomes a most heartbreaking bore. The speaker of "Wild Nights!", because her emotions go elsewhere, sounds almost chained to her oars, and the image is that of a galley slave turned towards freedom. “Futile the winds / For a heart in port” (Dickinson, lines 5 and 6) is surely true when the port is a place where the passionate heart is anchored, held back by all the means used to do such things. For a heart that longs to dance and celebrate on the churning waves of its own wilder sea, oppression reigns under cover, dance replaced by monotonous, repetitive movements within closed confines. The heart that longs to exult in savagery is held prisoner for reasons of security, which, the poet seems to say, is anathema to human, or at least feminine, nature. While Dean sees "Eden [as] not enough" (93), Dickinson sees Eden, at least in this poem, as the antithesis of the wild heart that beats restlessly within. She thus offers a much more provocative notion to those who seek truth in the voices and images of art. It is by discussing the apparent paradox of mooring in the sea that Dean concludes his reading of "Wild Nights!" Because he does not associate the tone and symbols of the poem with Dickinson's statement about feminine nature, it is inevitable that he ends up with a paradox.., 1992.