Critical Appreciation of I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

 

I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed is one of the most popular poem by Emily Dickinson. This poem has some symbolic meaning and some significance. To understand this poem, we need to know some background discussion of the poem. That discussion may be the critical appreciation of I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed and its summary. In this post, we will discuss all these things of I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed. So, let's see the critical appreciation of I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed.

I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed Summary

The poet imagines that she tastes a liquor (wine) that has never been brewed, from large cups of pearl. Such an alcohol is not available even from all the vats upon the river Rhine. She is intoxicated with air, and has become a debauchee or libertine after drinking dew.

Thus being intoxicated she reels through endless summer days. When the landlords turn out the drunken bees from the flowers of digitalis plants, and when butterflies give up their drinks, the poet will go on drinking her liquor. The angels will swing their snowy hats, and saints will run to the windows to see the drinker, leaning against the sun, as against a lamp-post. 

The theme of I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

The theme and important point of the poem is spiritual ecstasy. The poet has expressed her spiritual ecstasy through a cosmic metaphor; earthly and heavenly bodies have been implicitly compared to the different facets of her ecstasy. 

Critical Appreciation of I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

The poet imagines that she tastes a liquor that has never been brewed, from large cups of pearl. Such an alcohol is not available even from all the vats upon the river Rhine. She is intoxicated with air, and has become a debauchee or libertine after drinking dew. Intoxicated in this way, she reels through endless summer days. 

When the landlords turn out the drunken bees from the flowers of digitalis plants, and when butterflies give up their drinks, the poet will go on drinking her liquor. The angels swing their snowy hats, and saints will run to the windows to see the drinker, leaning against the sun, as against a lamp-post. 

This is the literal summary of the poem. But metaphorically the - poem expresses the spiritual ecstasy of the poet.
The theme has been expressed through a cosmic metaphor : earthly and heavenly bodies have been implicitly compared to the different facets of her ecstasy. 

It is a lyric written in four stanzas of four lines each. The rhyme. the scheme of each stanza is abcb. The first and third lines of each stanza are iambic tetrameter, and the second and fourth lines of each stanza are iambic trimeter. Of course, there are some variations. For example: 

Till sé/raphs swing/their snéw/y hats And saints/to win/dows ran/ 

The first line is iambic tetrameter, and the second, iambic trimeter. And in the line: 

Out of/the f6x/glove’s door We observe a variation in the first foot. It is a trochee. 

So the musical quality is obvious. Music is created by the regularity of metre and rhythm. The variations in some lines just break the monotony of the music that might have resulted from absolute regularity. The frequent dashes indicate pauses in utterances which allow more time for thinking over or enjoying the preceding utterance, and create expectation for the succeeding utterance which seems like bursting upon the suspension caused by the dash. 

Sound devices are also perceivable to a great extent. “Till seraphs swing their snowy hats”—the “S” sound in the underlined letters is repeated, and the repetition creates sibilants indicative of wonder at excellences. The very title of the poem is a hyperbole, and another hyperbole inf the first stanza, “Not all the vats upon the Rhine/Yield such an Alcohol!” intensifies the hyperbolic suggestion of the title. 

The images of the butterfly, and of the landlord are of the earthly objects, but the image contained ‘in “To see the little Tippler/Leaning against the —Sun—” combines the earthly with the heavenly objects, suggesting an enormity of the poetic world. 

The symbols in the poem are extended. Natural objects and phenomena are symbolized for the various aspects of her ecstasy. 

The liquor, here literally meaning beer, is symbolic of her taking in the pleasures of spiritual ecstasy. The landlords drive out bees from the foxgloves—this is a phenomenon in Nature, and “seraphs swing _ their snowy hats” in respect, is taken from the celestial sphere. ) Thus, the poet effectively communicates her theme by using various poetic devices.