I Can Wade Grief

The poem divides into two nine-line stanzas. The first is narrative-like in that it relates a story, albeit symbolic, of the impact joy can have on a person who understands that life is not designed for joy as a constant state of existence. The stanza delivers the story of a person unaccustomed to alcohol tapping into the delightful inebriation (the least push of Joy) and returning, a bit addled but hardly an alcoholic, ready to embrace the reassuring stability of the difficult day to day.

The second stanza would be familiar to mid-19th century readers. The stanza deals more deliberately with the poem’s lesson as if Dickinson wants to show she can deliver a lesson on par with the stodgy Fireside Poets. In this stanza, however, the lesson delivered is unconventional, even upsetting on first read. Suffering is invigorating, the greater the sorrows, the more resilient the heart can be.

Be a giant. That use of a closing stanza was typical of the public poetry of the Fireside Poets—the closing stanza delivers in pithy lines rendered in tight rhythm and often clever rhymes the lesson the poet wants to convey in lines sculpted to encourage easily memorization.