Emily Dickinson wrote a highly characteristic poetry on the joy and pain of existence. Her poetry is compressed, sharp, but sometimes ambiguous. It is very interesting because she exploits the potentialities of the form as much as the capacities of the semantics. In "After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes", one of her definition poems, she refers to nerves sitting like tombs and uses "Hour of Lead" and "Quartz contentment" as metaphors of special awareness of emotional hurt. This poem is obviously an attempt to communicate to the reader the nature of the experience, which comes "after g…
