Shynn Felarca Mrs. Cox English I Honors-Period 5 Due Date: 20 November 2015 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson A while back there was many poems and poets. Like Emily Elizabeth Dickinson who was a romantic poet who put many deep meanings behind her poems, even if her poems were all mostly and mainly about death. When she was alive she was an unknown poet but throughout the years she became well known. She didn’t actually become famous until her death. That is when she finally became famous because many of her poems were interesting to the public and society. When Dickinson was a child she attended school in Massachusetts, but became very homesick because she missed her home so much. “Around 1850 is the time when Dickinson started to write poems, she This major event in her life was caused by writing poems. Another reason she might have been isolated from everyone was because she was at home taking care of her mother during a young age and while she was in college to top that off. During that time “her father had died in 1874 suddenly” (Online Literature) and that is when she started to isolate herself from society and everything else. “She stopped going out in public though she still kept up her social contacts”, she wanted to keep in touch with people at the same time to make poems. At the same time, she told everyone that she was not suffering from anything, and that she enjoyed and “fulfilled the contact in her world” (Cliffnotes). Dickinson became in this state of matter because of the influence and “correspondence with Higginson,” was probably why Dickinson isolated everyone out of her life. Dickinson’s “correspondence with Higginson probably also influenced her that her poems had no significant in or won’t bring the audience's attention,” with Higginson’s words stuck in her head, it influenced her to isolate herself from society. While she was writing poems Dickinson wanted to make her parents, society and her family aware of her work. When she wrote her poems she wanted to make everyone proud of her work that she has been doing, including her parents. Her parents are the ones that she really wanted to impress and be proud of her. After all the isolation, she came out and she resigned from making poems. Dickinson’s life was supported with everything from parents to everyone in
Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once.
Loneliness was an important characteristic of both poet's lives during the writing years. Whitman, whose sexuality has been questioned, was never one for social interaction. Much of his time was spent writing or editing newspapers such as the Long Island Star and the Brooklyn Daily Times (Whitman XV). Dickinson, whose life was similar to Whitman's in a social sense, lived in a different atmosphere. Emily lived in Amherst which was a far cry from the hustle an bustle of Whitman's life in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. She never married, living alone in her home for the majority of her life (Dickinson 128). The loneliness, along with the inspiration from nature (a major characteristic of Romantic writing), are two things that can be seen in the two poems that we are about to take an in depth look at. In addition to these items we can also see a possible attempt by Whitman and Dickinson to keep their real life away from public view (even though they were not immediately published), instead making their lives seem joyous.
Emily Dickinson, who achieved more fame after her death, is said to be one of the greatest American poets of all time. Dickinson communicated through letters and notes and according to Amy Paulson Herstek, author of “Emily Dickinson: Solitary and Celebrated Poet,” “Writing was the way she kept in touch with the world” (15). Dickinson’s style is unique and although unconventional, it led to extraordinary works of literature. Dickinson lived her life in solitude, but in her solitude she was free to read, write and think which led to her nonconformity and strong sense of individualism. Suzanne Juhasz, a biographer of Dickinson, sums up most critics’ idea of Dickinson ideally: “Emily Dickinson is at once the most intimate of poets, and the most guarded. The most self-sufficient, and the neediest. The proudest, and the most vulnerable. These contradictions, which we as her readers encounter repeatedly in her poems, are understandable, not paradoxical, for they result from the tension between the life to which she was born and the one to which she aspired” (1). Dickinson poured her heart and soul into over 1,700
Dickinson was an excellent student by every account. She learned several languages besides studying classical music, Botany, Geology, History, Math and Philosophy. To Dickinson’s advantage her father was determined to see his daughters were as educated as his sons.
Only seven of her poems were published in her lifetime. The large amount of the remaining unpublished poems were published only a few years after her death. Dickinson believed that society was not a good thing, so much so that she refused to ever leave her house. She believed that a person is capable of growing on their own without the help of a corrupt society. She believed that society only brought bad things and should not be revered like it was in her day.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10th December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. As a young child, she showed a bright intelligence, and was able to create many recognizable writings. Many close friends and relatives in Emily’s life were taken away from her by death. Living a life of simplicity and aloofness, she wrote poetry of great power: questioning the nature of immortality and death. Although her work was influenced by great poets of the time, she published many strong poems herself. Two of Emily Dickinson’s famous poems, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died”, are both about life’s one few certainties, death, and that is where the similarities end.
Born in Massachusetts during the early 19th century, Emily Dickinson came from a well-educated upper-middleclass family. Although her family was well known for being sociable and engaging in community activity, Dickinson is portrayed as an introvert. Although shy, Dickinson greatly expressed her feelings on paper and her writing style is extremely unique. After reading multiple pieces by Dickinson I began to notice a similar pattern. She never titled any of her poems so the first line of each poem is now thought to be a title, she liked to use dashes to break up major thoughts for a dramatic pause, she uses slant rhyme, personification, and alliteration throughout all of her poetry, and lastly, she uses a lot of capitalization for the emphasis of certain words. Throughout her poetry, not only did Dickinson create a society, but also further more found nature. Although she had controversial doubts about death, she was very optimistic about American culture during the Romantic era.
She was not afraid to write of physical pain and joy or of death. Dickinson wrote about the completely ordinary as well as those intensely passionate or spiritual. In my opinion, one of Dickinson’s main concerns in writing was to be openly expressive about all encounters in life. This openness was not translated into a desire for fame because very few of her works were published during her lifetime. Emily Dickinson often sent her poems in letters to friends, and it was not until after her death that her poems were published and her impact on poetry realized.
Emily Dickinson was one of the most influential writers in American History. Emily was a renowned 19th century poet, who voiced her feelings and shed light on various aspects of her life. Although her poetry was mostly private, her works are very public today. The themes of Emily Dickinson’s poetry was influenced greatly by what she experienced throughout her life, beginning at an early age.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman all use different varieties of themes, mood, structure and literary devices throughout their poetry. Poetry uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. Poetry has been around for years, even back in the early 1900’s.
Emily Dickinson was affected by her life for several reasons. One of the reasons was that she was never married, though she went through many serious relationships, she never settled down.
Dickinson grew up in a very strict Puritan family. However, her poetry did not reflect her Puritan upbringing at all. As the late eighteen sixties came about, Dickinson became very attached to her family home and refused to leave it. She cut off most of her relationships with her friends. The only way she could express her feelings was through her writing. She eventually died in 1886 of a kidney condition called Bright’s disease. Against Dickinson’s request, her sister Lavinia turned over the rest of her work to be published.
Emily Dickinson grew up in a prominent and prosperous household in Amherst, Massachusetts. Along with her younger sister Vinnie and older brother Austin, she experienced a quiet and reserved family life headed by her father Edward Dickinson. In a letter to Austin at law school, she once described the atmosphere in her father's house as "pretty much all sobriety." Her mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was not as powerful a presence in her life; she seems not to have been as emotionally accessible as Dickinson would have liked. Her daughter is said to have characterized her as not the sort of mother "to whom you hurry when you are troubled." Both parents raised Dickinson to be a cultured Christian woman who would one day be responsible for a family of her own. Her father attempted to protect her from reading books that might "joggle" her mind, particularly her religious faith, but Dickinson's individualistic instincts and irreverent sensibilities created conflicts that did not allow her to fall into step with the conventional piety, domesticity, and social duty prescribed by her father and the orthodox Congregationalism of Amherst.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.
...w. These were before her turn on publishing commenced and after that never showed her poems to a publisher ever again and believed that by publishing the work it was like selling the royal air or selling free gifts from God. (Guthrie) It wasn’t until her sister discovered all of the poems in a fascicle within one of Dickinson’s drawers that they were sent to a publisher and published soon after. Now there are books and critics for Emily Dickinson’s work that has turned a woman who praised being a “nobody” and never publishing to a “somebody” that everyone loves.