Milton&Dickinson's poetry

I picked “When I Consider How my Light is Spent” because I didn’t understand what the hell it meant. I read it twice and then pondered whether my ability to interpret poetry was slipshod or whether this poem is the world’s most difficult to understand. It’s a poem, I learned, that only makes sense upon knowing the historical context. John Milton was blind early on, with none of his famous works being written yet (“When I consider how my light is spent /Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide”). As a devout Christian, he wondered how well he could serve God with no sight (“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”).  Then patience comes up and talks to him and says God’s best are those who bear their burdens gracefully, and also that although many people go country to country serving God, Milton need only wait on Him to serve Him: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” This poem is a response to the question of whether the disenfranchised can have productive lives worth living, and it seems to say yes. No point in wallowing in your disability, it says; best to do what you can, even if it is not as grand as what others do. It’s an important message, considering society does not really have an answer to this question, but there’s a common idea that those with disabilities can’t do much with their lives.

“I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” has a vaguely related message, believe it or not. It empathizes with the outsiders, the nobodies, the nameless. Dickinson gives herself a name, capitalized and all: “Nobody.” Considering how her life was spent, it’s understandable why she might see herself this way. She asks the reader if they are like her: “Are you - Nobody - too?” If so, she says, “Then there's a pair of us!/Don’t tell! they'd advertise - you know!” So basically, if you’re a nobody, society is happy to ridicule you. The second stanza is dear to my heart. “How dreary – to be – Somebody!” she says, followed by “To tell one's name – the livelong June –  To an admiring Bog!” So if you’re somebody “important,” somebody with a name, you spend all your time talking about yourself, explaining yourself, putting on a front, a fake personality to appease the “bog;” a.k.a. the rest of the somebodies who aren't really listening and don’t really care. As a Somebody, you’re like a “frog” talking alone to the bog in your forest that is not really paying all that much attention to you and doesn't recognize how special you are (“to an admiring Bog” is a sarcastic way to say it’s not actually admiring you at all, considering bogs don't have the mental capabilities of admiration.) You have to make a name for yourself and explain yourself to it as a Somebody, but ultimately you are really not all that significant. Dickinson thus celebrates being on the sidelines, or being disadvantaged in a way, since you don’t need to spend all this time appeasing the bog.