Discuss the purpose of Dickinsons metaphor of intoxication

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‘I taste a liquor never brewed’ is one of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems, in it she argues that ‘being openly drunk and debauched in the highest form of temperance’. It was published in an original poetry column in ‘The Springfield Republican’ under the title ‘The May Wine’ in 1861. In the early 19th century there was a movement known as ‘transcendentalism’; the belief that ‘God was imminent in nature and man, that the soul was present in all things, and that the physical senses needed to be transcended through the truth of intuition.’ This belief could be applied to ‘I taste a liquor never brewed…’ a poem in which Emily Dickinson tries to show us how nature can be so sensual and gratifying that it can create a sense of ecstasy or drunkenness in us by using the metaphor ‘intoxication’. The poem’s form has lyrical qualities and is written in the common metre with 8-6-8-6 syllables in the lines. Common metre is usually used in hymns and because the poem is so lyrical it gives it the sense of being a hymn itself, because hymns are usually about praising God we are given the sense that Dickinson is praising nature as though it were her god. We can also see this praise through the subjects of each stanza. Dickinson has organized them into four different subjects, they all represent a season; spring, summer with it’s ‘endless summer days’, autumn and winter’s ‘snowy hats’. By creating her stanzas around each season she is paying homage to the natural world and glorifying it, bringing our attention to its importance. In the poetic voice of the poem the tone is joyous, excessive and boastful. The use of the words ‘reeling- thro endless summer days ’shows the joy of the poem as it creates the image of her dancing endlessly in ongoing happiness. The excessiveness of the poem is shown by the line ‘tankards scooped in pearl’. The word ‘scoop’ creates the image of
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