My friend and I were debating this Emily Dickinson poem
Is Dickinson describing everyone’s decision making process, or her own particular one? Why "two mays" but one of everything else?
What's your view? Tell us what you think in the reply?
Is Dickinson describing everyone’s decision making process, or her own particular one? Why "two mays" but one of everything else?
What's your view? Tell us what you think in the reply?
Comments
Emily may, or may not, have also been entertaining an attraction to someone named May. Or two someones.
“I may or may not go”
“But you must!”
“All right, I shall.”
Elaborate it to include a compromise of some kind. I’m a dingbat with poetry though 🙈
“Two mays” means something like, "you may do this or you may do that."
She writes "two mays" because it sounds better than “one may”, but it could just as easily be “one may”. The meaning’s the same.
It’s everyone’s (i.e. the human) approximate decision making process being described
The poem's is about her own particular decision making process.
She’s clearly exaggerating, almost laughing at herself in the last two lines due to her hemming and hawing so you can’t define exactly what any of the "mays" (or the "musts" etc) are.
With poems, the interpretations are also infinite therefore, you could be both correct.
Yes you may?
But must I?
No, but you shall
Ok I will!