Potpourri Unit 2

     I taste a liquor never brewed by Emily Dickinson is an extended metaphor.  Intoxication is being compared to nature and spring.  There are drinking images of nature.  For example, "Inebriate of Air" (4) and "Debauchee of Dew" (5) show how intoxication is being connected with nature.  The speaker is not really drunk but is displaying the certain feeling they get from being around nature.  The summer days and air make the speaker feel as if he/she is drunk.  The butterflies and bees in the poem are the insects that get the same feeling.  The end of the poem shows the Seraphs and Saints being alright with the drunkenness of the speaker.  They are so curious that "to windows run" (13).  The poem accepts and encourages the intoxication that nature brings upon people.  That is how great nature is.