Topic > The Romantic Tradition in "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed"

On first reading Emily Dickinson's poem "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed", it appears to be a relatively simple piece whose main goal is to praise nature as a source of beauty and inspiration. Conventions of romance are employed to achieve this, and in Dickinson's hands she succeeds wonderfully. However, when reading the poem considering Dickinson's wit and aversion to poetic convention, one discovers another level that elevates the poem above a simple exercise in romanticism. Ultimately, the poem represents both an homage to and a satire of the Romantic tradition, revealing an intellectual depth that would become a fundamental component of modernist poetry. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the first two stanzas of Dickinson's poem, a figurative drunkenness is described that immediately recalls John Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale." Dickinson describes that the "never brewed liquor" she is drunk on is nature itself: "Inebriated with air - am I / And profligate with dew", while Keats attributes her drunken state to the "invisible wings of poetry". Everyone continues in their poetic exhilaration to reflect on the majesty of nature. Keats famously admires “the grass, the grove, and the wild fruit-trees,” and Dickinson feverishly devours the “endless summer days” and “inns of molten blue” bestowed upon her by nature's bounty. It is clear that Dickinson admires Romantic poetry enough to work within its boundaries, but is not comfortable working within those boundaries without acknowledging their limitations. There is an ease and fluidity in Keats's verse, common in most Romantic poetry, that is not only absent in Dickinson, but seems to be intentionally contrasted. Dickinson's poem, especially the first stanza, is full of harsh consonance: "I taste an unbrewed liquor—From mugs scooped in Pearl—Not all the Frankfort Berries Yield such an Alcohol!" Furthermore, the repeated use of hyphens and almost manic language ("When the butterflies - give up their 'dramas' -/ I will drink more!") adds fragmentation and madness to the poem, suggesting a mysterious restlessness beneath its idealistic surface. The Romantics, even when attempting to honor the immense destructive power of nature, often could not help but be intoxicated by its beauty. Percy Shelley, in his poem “Mont Blanc,” refers to the surrounding natural environment as a “terrible scene,” and in the same sentence employs dreamy language to paint a scene of breathtaking beauty, describing the trees as “Children of the times older, in whose devotion / The unchained winds come and come again / To drink in their odors and their mighty sway...” This undermines the intimidating presence of Mont Blanc itself and gives us the impression of a nature contemplated by distant. This to-and-fro between a reverence for nature's beauty and a disjointed respect for its immense power was common among Romantics, especially among those living in England, where the land and people had been largely domesticated. the nature Dickinson knew was probably far more combative and mysterious than the English pastoral countryside admired by Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley and the like. The Romantics were known to observe the natural environment with a childlike wonder not afforded to Americans, whose homeland was known to be vast, wild, sparsely populated, and, as far as European migrants were concerned, young. By putting the word "owners" in quotation marks, Dickinson reminds us of the absurdity of the concept: that in reality the land gives us.