"Wild nights... Wild nights!" it is as enigmatic as it is condensed. Most critics agree that it is an essentially erotic poem, but interpretations vary widely within this shared recognition of its eroticism. There is disagreement about what motivated Dickinson's eros, toward whom or what she directed that motivation, and even about what feelings she attempted to convey. With criticisms ranging from stating that the poem evokes “the quiet, even regressive, consequences of orgiastic liberation” (Pollack, 185), to labeling it “homoerotic” (Farr, 223) – it is impossible to imagine a definitive definition. reading on which everyone can reach a consensus. However, for anyone who felt the underlying emotional tension in “Wild Nights!” by Dickinson! it seems incongruous to hear James L. Dean describe the poem as "less provocative" (92) simply because the final "You" might address the metaphorical sea rather than a particular lover. To reach this conclusion one would have to assume that an anticipated tryst between individuals is somehow more provocative than a simmering sexual tension that springs from nature directly into the human psyche. It suggests a reader more interested in voyeuristic imagery than the deeper questions of desire, and one who might ultimately be better served reading bawdy limericks than pondering Dickinson's words. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay James L. Dean is not familiar with Emily Dickinson or "Wild Nights!" Indeed, in his Explicator essay from the winter of 1993, Dean tells us that he has thought about the poem enough over the years to "have had eight or nine minds about it" (91). This is probably why he asks such helpful questions to help us with analysis and why his insights into various aspects of the poem are so compelling. It's even more confusing, then, when his words lead almost exactly to the emotional nerve that drives the poem's voice before it veers and crashes into one of his fantasies. Dean makes important points: he identifies the metaphorical sea, examines the speaker's relationship to Eden, and discusses what he sees as a paradox of anchoring in the wild sea, but in each case his analysis suffers from a kind of myopic march towards a conclusion the poet never intended. While Dean has his eyes set on a wild sexual affair that will happen "Tonight," Emily Dickinson's gaze extends further. "Wild Nights - Wild Nights!" it is an expression of an erotic desire so integral to human nature that the poet connected it to the larger natural world by necessity. Instead of humming in hungry contemplation of an impending rendezvous, Dickinson's poetry expresses a quality of unquenchable passion that no earthly Eden, nor any single "Tonight," can ever satisfy. Dean sees the "sea" as the source and siren of passion, thus concluding it is the place where "passionate nature runs wild" (92) - this is partly right, but somehow never manages to connect the potential for mindless turmoil of the sea and the chaotic need in the speaker's voice. There is a jolt in the poem as it veers from the cry of luxury of the first stanza, to the apparent departure and respite of the second stanza, and finally back to longing in the second line of the final stanza. This conveys a corresponding jolt of emotion: the speaker can't even hold steady for the final stanza as he looks from Eden suddenly to the sea. When Dean sees the sea only as a place to unleash the wild heart, he fails to convey ourssense that the speaker is intimate with the turmoil beneath, that indeed, all the forces working to unleash a sea of ​​attack are the same. forces that act in the same way in his heart. Dean points out the poem's symbolic parallels between the human heart and the passionate nature of the sea, but attributes them only to the latter – he sees "the anarchic, the dark, the menacing, and the wild" (93), but simply as things that the speaker seeks, not as aspects of his being that are inseparable from his nature. Blinded by his imaginary goal of a particular sexual "tonight," Dean misses the boldest image here, one that shows us a female passion that is fundamentally wild, that is as infinitely rich and powerful as the sea that Dickinson uses as a metaphor. . Far from being less provocative, this reading has implications that strike at the core of sexual notions in our culture, and which certainly ignored the Victorian attitudes of the poet's time. Dean's reading of line 9, "Rowing in Eden," includes the thought, "there may even be a slight disdain of Eden as tame, depending on the tone we perceive" (93). If we take into account the exuberant speculation of the first stanza, and then read line 10 as a sudden reflection away from Eden and towards that anarchic sea, Eden seems not only tame, but suffocating and oppressive. Looking at the poem through Dean's eyes, it is understandable that he saw docility rather than oppression: docility fits his more superficial idea of ​​a speaker who wants a particular diversionary attempt to assuage his hunger, while perceiving the Oppression would require Dean to feel the internal conflict of boundless passion held captive by someone else's idea of ​​heaven. Where Dean believes that “rowing in Eden may imply great happiness [but not] danger or substantial expenditure of energy” (93), he completely misses the boat by not fully recognizing the irony he initially suggests. The speaker is not satisfied in Eden, it is not a paradise of her own making and, furthermore, the act of rowing is far from happy and effortless - in fact, most rowers will find that what was originally splendid and full of adventures quickly becomes boredom of the most paralyzing kind. The speaker in "Wild Nights!", as her emotions turn elsewhere, seems almost chained to her oars, and the image is that of a galley-boat looking toward freedom. “Fuseless the wind / To a heart in port” (Dickinson, lines 5 – 6) is surely true when the port is a place where the passionate heart is anchored, held by whatever means such things are done. For a heart that longs to dance and celebrate on the rushing waves of its wildest sea, there is oppression in the refuge, the dance replaced by monotonous and repetitive movements within closed confines. The heart that yearns to rejoice wildly is held captive for safety, which, the poet seems to say, is anathema to human, or at least female, nature. While Dean sees “Eden [as] not enough” (93), Dickinson sees Eden, at least in this poem, as the antithesis of the wild heart that beats incessantly within it. It therefore provides a much more provocative idea for those who seek truth in the voices and images of art. It is by discussing the apparent paradox of mooring at sea that Dean concludes his reading of "Wild Nights!" Since he does not associate the tone and symbols of the poem with Dickinson's statement about female nature, he inevitably arrives at a paradox. If it were true that the speaker was working under an "intensity of desire [as he moved] from a general longing for wild nights to a specific and intensely desired 'Tonight,'" as Dean puts it (Dean, 93),, 1992.