Emily Dickinson is a fascinating poet whose poetry tends to be a bit abstract, and this poem is no exception. What does she mean by “They shut me up in Prose?” – is it that society expects her to not write poetry? Someone else? And why? To me, the rest of the poem is fairly simple to grasp – she was locked away as a child because she was too rowdy or talkative, but like a bird can simply fly away, her thoughts could not be tamed.
Perhaps the same people who liked her “still” wanted her in a more traditional writing medium than poetry. Maybe poetry simply wasn’t for respectable American women. Dickinson was correct though when she compared herself to the bird. Whoever tried to lock her to prose failed, and though in her lifetime she stayed locked away, post-mortum she became one of the most famous American poets.
Nice post! I felt myself asking a lot of the same questions your are. I also considered the fact that prose is generally the writing style with stricter rules than poetry. While poetry often breaks many traditional writing conventions, she may feel confined by the metaphorical rules that come with living ‘in Prose.’ Perhaps referencing prose is a symbol for the confinements society has on her (maybe as a woman and author) and how she feels weighed down by these restrictions–connecting back to her childhood and untamable thoughts.