The Only News I Know

In much of Dickinson’s poetry, eternity and immortality are linked, reoccurring symbols. In her famous poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” Dickinson depicts the speaker’s journey with a personified Death inside his carriage. The speaker states, “The Carriage held but just Ourselves—/ And Immortality” (Lines 3-4). In her other poem “My life closed twice before its close,” Dickinson’s speaker acknowledges that, after the deaths of two people they cared about, “it yet remains to see / If Immortality unveil / A third event” (Lines 2-4) or a third death to them. In each poem, the term immortality is used to speak euphemistically of and is “practically synonymous” (“Emily Dickinson on Death,” Ruth Flanders McNaughton, pg. 208) with death itself. Within the Christian theology Dickinson both embraced and struggled with, death is a necessary step on the journey toward eternal life. Once a believer had died, they would be resurrected and given a perfect body before being ushered into a better life in Heaven. Thus, Dickinson always speaks of death in optimistic terms like immortality or eternity, emphasizing the spiritual joy of eternal life after death rather than the pain and grief associated with physical death.

In “The Only News I know,” Dickinson once more uses the terms eternity and immortality. When describing the “Only News” (Line 1) she receives, Dickinson refers to “Bulletins all Day / From Immortality” (Lines 2-3). She does not see bulletins while reading a newspaper; the bulletins she knows of and sees come solely from “Immortality” or death. Her meditations on and communications with death provide the only new information she collects. Similarly, the “Only Shows” (Line 4) she sees are not plays at the theater but each day as it passes until “eternity” (Line 6). She devotes her time to spiritual meditations on the fate of human beings after death and does not waste time reading news about her temporal world or entertaining frivolous theatrics. For Dickinson, eternity and immortality are a constant motif and worthy topic of reflection.