House

Emily goes crazy with the "house" imagery in this poem. Basically, the whole thing is one big—well, little—extended metaphor that compares poetry to a home.

It's not just any home, though; it's a house that's one with nature and the universe. Sounds like a sweet house to us. We've been looking for a place like this in the real estate pages ever since we first read this poem, but so far we've had no luck.

• Line 1: The word "dwell" revs up the extended metaphor of the house from the very first line. "Dwell" means to live somewhere, and it has a really homey connotation. Of course, the first line also lets us know that this isn't your average suburban McMansion. This house is "Possibility." 
• Line 2: This line is the only one where the word "House" is actually used. It lets us know that the speaker thinks her house is really nice—no leaky money pits here. The line also clues us in to the fact that the speaker is using the symbol of a house to represent poetry. The line does this in a roundabout way by saying that the speaker's house is nicer than that boring house down the street, a.k.a. "Prose."
• Lines 3-4: We get more house imagery in these lines, which tell us that the poetry house is maxed out with windows and doors. Specifically, these lines tell us that the poetry house has way more windows and doors than the prose house. We're guessing this means that the speaker thinks that poetry is more "open" than prose. What do you think? Is that true?
• Line 5: It wouldn't be an extended metaphor if it didn't, well, extend, and this one doesn't disappoint. Here, the speaker builds her extended metaphor using a simile to compare the rooms of the house with a forest of cedar trees. She's really laying the poetic devices on thick, right? Now we're not only dealing with a house that symbolizes poetry; we're also being told that the house is like a forest. So it's an extended metaphor that uses a simile to juxtapose two contrasting types of imagery: domesticated house and undomesticated nature. What can we say? Emily doesn't pull any punches. 
• Lines 7-8: The speaker continues to blow our minds with this house/nature juxtaposition deal. After telling us that the rooms are like a forest, the speaker then says that the roof is the sky. With this metaphor on top of a metaphor, the speaker hammers home the contrast between the contained structure of a house and uncontained eternal sky. What's so cool about it is that she doesn't compare the house and the sky separately; she tells us that they are one and the same.