[1337] Ample Make This Bed

Guest poem sent in by Linda Roberts <Linda.Roberts@>

Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

	-- Emily Dickinson

(Complete Poems Part Four: Time and Eternity, LXIII)

After reading today's Emily Dickinson (Poem #1328) and reflecting on the
recent "poetry in the movies" thread, I thought of this poem, used to such
great effect in "Sophie's Choice" and especially touching to anyone like me
who's recently lost a loved one.

Graves are often compared to beds, and death to sleep, but Dickinson's
description seems especially poignant to me, since graves are frequently
described as narrow or deep, but "ample" seems both an unusual and apt term.

Linda

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From: Nomad <nomad@>

This is one of the best poems you could pick, a tremendous poem. I have
heard wonderful professors do an hour long lecture just on the layers of
amazing shit in this poem. It is one of them that lives deep inside of me.

Chris

From: VnVJC37@

I, too, remember my poetry prof spend an hour lecturing on the deep layers of 
this poem and compare the bed to a grave and pass judgment on the author, 
saying that she must have been in terrible despair over a lost relationship in 
order to prefer the sleeping state to the waking state. But I must confess: This 
poem came to mind several months ago simply when my alarm clock went off and 
the sun was shining through my window on my face and I realized I had to drag 
myself up to go to work. That moment of the day is usually awful for me, for 
all I want to do is go back to the comforts of sleep. I know that's a 
superficial analysis, but I honestly think it suffices on some level. 

Thank you very much for letting me share...

From: "Matt Chanoff" <mattchanoff@>

One thing that's shockingly beautiful about this poem to me is how
eroticized it is. Except for the line "in it wait till judgment break,"
it could be about a marriage bed.

Also, Dickinson has a way of doing things wrong that somehow seem right.
 What's the deal with breaking the rhyme at the end of the first but not
the last stanza? And who's she addressing? Overall, it's like a prayer
to God, but some of it addresses the diseased "in it wait..."

Also, it reminds me of something my 10th grade poetry teacher said: look
for trochees in poems about death. The stressed, unstressed rhythm gives
a sense of trailing off, drifting away. Think of "To be or not to be,
that is the question/...fortune/...end them."  This poem is all
trochees, but each line ends with a final stressed syllable. Where
Shakespeare was using this rhythm to brood about death, he was also
expressing Hamlet's indecisiveness (trailing off, mumbling). Dickinson
uses that final stress to add a feeling of finality.

Beautiful poem, nice choice.

Matt

From: MarChrist@

yes it is a marriage bed and a not-wanting-to-get-out-of-bed bed.

of course the death bed is there and that's why it's so great for s's choice 
b/c it is a marriage bed and death bed.  look at the story and the end of the 
film.

when i hear the poem i hear love and coupling but when i read it in print i 
see death.   idn't that weird?