I cannot live with you poems :

I cannot live with You 

It would be Life
And Life is over there a
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to 

Putting up
Our Life  His Porcelain
Like a Cup 

Discarded of the Housewife 

Quaint or Broke  
A newer Sevres pleases 
Old Ones crack  

I could not die with You  

For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down 
You could not 

And I could I stand by

And see You freeze 
Without my Right of Frost 
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise with You

Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus' 
That New Grace

Glow plain and foreign

On my homesick Eye 
Except that You than He
Shone closer by 

They'd judge Us How 

For You served Heaven You know,
Or sought to 
I could not 

Because You saturated Sight 

And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be  
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame 

And were You saved 

And I condemned to be
Where You were not  
That self  were Hell to Me

So We must meet apart  

You there I here 
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are and Prayer 
And that White Sustenance 
Despair 

 Historical background of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is one of the most renowned poets of all time in American literature.
However, she was not very well known during her lifetime and led a life completely
opposed to the kind of public life poets usually lived. Dickinson was a very private person
who lived in obscurity and mystery for most of her life, having only a very small, close
group of friends with whom she shared her intimate thoughts and poetry. She did not
like being in the public limelight and instead cherished ideas of solitude and individual
happiness.

A number of her poems give center stage to these ideas – she argues for her choices and
champions her existence through poetry. Written in her most creative period, the poem
“I cannot live with You” (1862) too brings to light the idea of living an individual life that
is interesting rather than a lonely life despite being surrounded by people. It is also
essential to understand that women were not allowed to voice their opinions and
choices of living their own lives, and hence this poem becomes even more important in
this regard.

The speaker is unapologetic and clear about what she wants. Even though her love for
her significant other is endless, she cannot see herself living the conventional idea of
love. It would be considered unthinkable for women to have such opinions in rigid,
orthodox society. Therefore, challenging patriarchal conventions is something that
Dickinson brings out throughout this piece.
  “I cannot live with you” summary

In “I cannot live with You,” Dickinson talks about the other aspect of desire; how “love”
is not the only thing enough to sustain life. Her poetic persona explains her reasoning to
her lover with a heavy heart about why they cannot be together despite being in love.
She tells him that even though she loves him, they cannot live together because she
foresees the slow monotony that will capture their existence. Their life would be like a
“Cup” discarded of a house wife full of boredom, uselessness, and dullness.

She would rather love him from a distance rather than be together and lose that love
they share. The speaker also goes on to say that she cannot live with her lover because
she would not be able to bear the pain of separation upon the lover’s death, as they
cannot die together. She elaborates on the uncertainty of reunion after death, and while
there is no doubt that though she loves her significant other, she cannot commit to living
with him because love is not an isolated idea, it encompasses other worthwhile
considerations.

 Meaning

Dickinson presents a very different persona in “I cannot live with You” – one whose love
is deep and unshakeable but who cannot deal with the domesticity and monotony that
love in a society brings. Through the many scattered lines that jump from one idea to the
next, she talks about how love can be as difficult as nurturing and cherishing it for the
rest of one’s life. She draws the clear distinction between romanticizing love from a
distance and actually living with the person one loves. The idea of eventual separation
from the lover once they’ve lived a lifetime together is much more painful for the
speaker than not being with him at all. Thus, it becomes more important for her. The
purest form of love is as exists in the speaker’s mind – at a distance.

This poem also subtly brings out the speaker’s own perception of herself and her grim
idea of existence. The very fact that life itself isn’t desirable to her. Therefore she doesn’t
want this tedium to extend to a lifetime with her lover. That is what Dickinson portrays
through this piece.

 Structure of the poem

“I cannot live with You” is a lyric poem that is written in the first-person point of view.
The speaker directly addresses her lover to tell him why they cannot live together as per
societal norms. This piece is structurally very modernist and different from linguistically
normative lyric poems. It is made up of 12 stanzas of varying line lengths, with every
stanza consisting of four lines.

Dickinson plays with punctuation and the arrangement of words in the poem. She
employs a sort of stream-of-consciousness ploy which became popular with modernist
writers later in the 20th-century. Besides, she makes use of pauses, metrical breaks
(caesura) within the lines, omission of punctuation, and her trademark dashes
throughout the poem, which can be found in her other poems as well.

This brings in the sense of urgency and also emphasizes the metrical pauses in the poem.
These linguistic peculiarities depict the speaker’s anxious state of mind and her pain in
conveying her thoughts to her lover. Language becomes the central way in which the
poem portrays the pangs felt by the aching lover.