Emily Dickinson's Train: Iron Horse or "Rough Beast"?

Abstract

NE of most widely anthologized of Emily Dickinson's poems, I like to see it lap Miles,' would seem to be one of most readily comprehended as well. Dickinson apparently builds her poem around then already hackneyed image of iron horse, which she infuses with new life by imagining that locomotive actually has some of attributes of its equine counterpart. Yet part of charm of poem is owing to indirection: it is written form of riddle, which neither object being described nor its metaphorical equivalent is ever explicitly identified, so that readers have to make connections themselves. Such strategy has evidently proved attractive to general audience, if we can judge by poem's familiarity. However, poem has scarcely been an unqualified critical success. The relatively sparse commentary it has attracted (which includes no detailed explication)2 provides sharply divergent perspectives: where Charles Anderson finds a bright piece of wit,3 Richard Chase detects the element of strain, incapacity for relaxation. Chase goes on to say that in that larger element of style which is called tone poem fails. . . . The trouble is that grace, quickness, fancy, or even metaphysical wit which poem is supposed to convey cannot be achieved by straining after them, as this poem does.4 Yvor Winters goes much