Emily Dickinson’s Poem “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun” this poem is very interesting to me because the underlying theme of the poem is anger, which is something we all know very well. In the first stanza of this poem Dickinson is comparing her life to a loaded gun, and “the Owner” which carried her and her life away is her anger. It is easy for our anger to get the best of us and get swept away by it. This is something that happens to me very often to me, as I’m sure it does for many of you. The next stanza depicts hunting a deer in the woods, this is a violent act which anger can cause someone to be very violent. When Dickinson writes “every time I speak for Him –” she is referring to when she speaks for her anger (the anger is “Him”). Her speaking for the anger is when the gun is shot since anger can explode and make a person blow at any time. When she writes “the mountain straight reply –” this can be seen as the echo a gun makes when it goes off in the woods, but also the ripple affect someone actions when they are angry can have. The next stanza after this contain the lines “And do I smile, such cordial light” when Dickinson writes this she is describing how after a while the and the anger dissipates she can let out a smile to become friendly again. Like many of Emily Dickinson’s poems, we can relate to them especially in this case with the underlying anger and problems it brings.