This was a Poet - It is That

This was a Poet-It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings-
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door-
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it-before-

Of Pictures, the Discloser-
The Poet-it is He-
Entitles Us-by Contrast-
To ceaseless Poverty-

Of Portion-so unconscious-
The Robbing-could not harm-
Himself-to Him-a Fortune-
Exterior-to Time-


The tone created in "This was a Poet- It is That" honors poets and leaves the reader with a respect for them. Emily Dickinson points out the fact that poems result from a poet's distillation of natural, ordinary meanings to novel and ingenious sense. A poet's work leaves beauty to be appreciated from what may have previously been overlooked. The second stanza reveals the speaker to be a reader of poetry who, like so many other readers, is often fascinated by a poet's simple yet brilliant interpretation of a familiar subject. Emily Dickinson's  notion that a poet is comparable to a thief is yet another display of admiration of poetry. She suggests that because a poet's original ideas can never be someone else's, the readers have no choice but to appreciate the thought as fully as they can. Therefore, the poet has stolen and, in a sense, monopolized the idea. I concur with Dickinson's label on poetry as "amazing" and believe that this poem very accurately delineates the relationship between poet and reader. Many times I have found myself so astounded by someone else's realization that seemed so obvious, yet I was not the first to think of it.