Emily Dickinson uses the power of metaphor and symbolism in her poem "My Life Was Standing" to express how she felt as a poet at one time. when women had much less freedom of independent thought and expression; she gives her readers a painfully honest confession of the sacrifices she felt she had to make to become the artist she was. The poem's structure, word choice, and symbolism work elegantly to translate her internal conflict onto paper and to explain to her readers how she sacrificed her identity as a woman in order to effectively unleash her creativity. The artistic authority denied to her by society, because she was a woman, is somehow granted to her in the act of submitting to her inner male, her “owner” and “master.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The poem consists of six quatrains and follows a fairly common rhythmic pattern in his writing. The first and last stanzas are the only ones with a solid rhyme pattern, ABCB, and the third and fourth contain slant rhymes, also ABCB. She is precise in her arguments and does not use more words than she considers necessary; it is fair and precise, yet powerful and effective in its execution. It addresses the reader directly; in a concise and concrete manner, she tells the reader how her life as a “loaded weapon” had “stayed in the corners”, until the day her master “identified her and took her away”. The rest of the poem describes the various ways in which his life found meaning through the hands of this “master.” The final stanza, rather than concluding the poem, leaves the reader uncertain as to the nature of his or her relationship with the “master.” Verb tenses vary somewhat throughout the poem. The first stanza takes place in the past, using the past perfect verb “had stood” to imply that the condition that was then real to her is no longer real. The remainder of the poem continues primarily in the active present tense. She's talking about her current reality, what's actively happening in her world at that moment. She opens the last stanza in the indefinite future tense, giving the reader a feeling of unknown about what awaits her, then she ends the poem with the last two lines in the present tense, their meaning hanging on the uncertainty created in the previous one. . two lines. Emily briefly walks the reader through her past, spends most of the poem in the present, and ends the poem by explaining what she hopes will happen, what she thinks "must" happen, when the time is right for her and her. his “master” to die. Emily uses nature and the theme of hunting to express her ideas. Its life is a “loaded weapon”, its owner is a hunter. The fact that she chose nature as the domain in which to express these ideas is entirely typical of her writing and serves an important purpose. Nature, “sovereign”, represents a place where man controls his life. These images evoke the atypical American pioneer spirit, the freedom to live independently in one's environment, something she had not experienced in her "corners". The reader also feels her energetic rage through the words she uses. They “hunt the deer,” making the mountains resonate with the sound of bullets. His smile illuminates the valley with a “cordial light”, as if a “Vesuvian face had let its pleasure pass”. The power and force of their activity in nature is like an erupting volcano, a powerful release of pent-up energy. Regarding the symbolism of the poem, there is much to say; the whole poem is