Many people in the world today misunderstand and judge other people. This represents people throughout time. In the mid to late 1800s, people judged Emily Dickinson and never really knew who she was. Her life was a mystery to most people because all they knew was her reclusive self. She wrote at the end of the Romantic Period but is also referred to as a writer from the Realist era due to her focusing on negative aspects of life. Writing over 1,770 poems, Dickinson published only seven throughout her lifetime (Dommermuth-Costa 105). People never realized her talent until after she was dead and her sister, Lavinia, took her poems to be published (104). Without intending to do so, Dickinson affected American Romanticism through her writings and her knowledge (104). She wrote unconventional, but her poems were unique by lacking a title and using different punctuation (104). People can learn about Emily Dickinson without just reading her biography. Her poetry reveals many aspects of her life such as solitude, pain, religion, love, and death. Emily Dickinson’s life greatly influenced her poetry.
Dickinson’s poetry possesses the idea of solitude just as her life did. “There is a Solitude of Space” says that a person can find anonymity in the privacy of her home (Dommermuth-Costa 56). In addition, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” contains a description of a soul that freely chooses to close itself off from the world to pursue solitude in order to help with her creativity and self-discovery, which is what Dickinson decided to do with her life (“The Soul Select”). In the first stanza of “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” the speaker describes the soul shutting a door, an image of an individual deliberately closing herself away (“The So...
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...(“Because I Could”). Dickinson spent most of her time in bed from November 1885 because she was suffering from Bright’s disease, a very serious disease of the liver (Dommermuth-Costa 101). She went into a coma on May 13, 1886 and never regained consciousness (101). Dickinson’s fascination with death reflects the theme of death in her poetry.
In conclusion, Emily Dickinson’s life inspired her poetry’s themes. Her experience with her solitude and religious ideals added to the truth behind some of her poems. Additionally, her pain experienced from deaths and her fascination with death portrayed an individual’s true feelings toward death. Her love life greatly influenced her poetry because many people did not know about her having any kind of relationships with people. Overall, reading Emily Dickinson's poetry helps a person discover the many experiences of her life.
Emily Dickinson wrote hundreds of short poems in her lifetime. Having read only a very small percentage of her work, it’s clear to me the recognized genius of this woman is well deserved, and that I have more to learn from her. Dickinson’s poetry touches of life, death, nature, religion, sexuality, identity, gender roles, and that’s just the surface.
Emily Dickinson was a different type of poet that has people thinking of things people would never think about in another author’s work. Dickinson was born and raised with the rich life with only two siblings. Her work was inspired by her much of her childhood and the people she interacted with. An example of Dickinson’s different type of style is, “ So I conclude that space and time are things of the body and have little or nothing to do with ourselves. My Country is Truth,”(Berry) Emily Dickinson did not share hardly any of her writing when she was alive. According to Berry,” With the exception of six poems that appeared in newspapers at various times, and another that appeared in a collection of stories and poems in 1878, Emily Dickinson never published her work,” (Berry) Even though Dickinson wrote differently, does not mean she had a different lifestyle compared to most people today. Dickinson was an outstanding American poet where her childhood, family and friends, religion, and education inspired most of her poetry.
The life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.
Biographers feel that the secret inspiration to Dickinson's poetry can be discovered by examining her personal life. During the 1860s and 1870s, Dickinson grew even more reclusive. She turned away almost every visitor who came to see her, and she locked herself in her room for days at a time. Later on, a number of people close to Dickinson died in quick succession. These people included her mother, her friend Judge Otis Lord, her young nephew, her close friend Helen Fiske Hunt and Dr. Charles Wadsworth.
Miss Dickinson is often compared with other poets and writers, but “like Shakespeare, Miss Dickinson is without opinions'; (Tate 86). “Her verses and technical license often seem mysterious and can confuse critics, but after all is said, it is realized that like most poets Miss Dickinson is no more mysterious than a banker. It is said that Miss Dickinson’s life was starved and unfulfilled and yet all pity is misdirected. She lived one of the richest and deepest lives ever on this continent. It was her own conscious choice to deliberately withdraw from society into her upstairs room…'; (Tate 83). She kept to “only a few select friends and the storm, wind, wild March sky, sunsets, dawns, birds, bees, and butterflies were sufficient companionship for Miss Dickinson'; (Loomis 79). She dealt with a lot both physically and psychologically and in the end she still came out on the top. So as Allen Tate best said it “in her own historical setting Miss Dickinson is nevertheless remarkable and special'; (82).
Emily Dickinson was one of America’s great poets. Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1,800 poems and many letters. Most of her poetry was not published until after she died. Only about 10 out of thousands of poems were published. In 1865, Dickinson isolated herself from the outside world. Only her family and friends knew about her writing. She was very shy. Dickinson got to write because their maid Maggie Maher did extra work around the house that Dickinson should have been doing (Borus, 14-23). She is known for her famous epoms “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Much Madness”, “If I can stop” and, “I Heard A Fly Buzz” and many others famous poems”. Emily Dickinson wrote about death, nature, pain, truth, religion, and love using unique styles to convey her themes.
Dickinson was unique and the “exception” in creating a private relationship with her self and her soul. In “Emily Dickinson and Popular Culture”, David S. Reynolds, a new historicism critic, wrote that it 's no surprise that the majority of Dickinson 's poetry was produced between 1858-1866, “It was a period of extreme consciousness about proliferation of varied women 's role in American culture.” It was a time where women were actively searching for more “literary” ways of self expression” (Reynolds 25). Dickinson was able to express her ideas and beliefs as a woman, something that was scandalous during this time period.
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
Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.
Emily is still one of the most well respected and influential writers today. All the things that happened in her life affected how she wrote and what she wrote about. Emily suffered through a lot of death,but through this, death became one of her main themes in her poetry. Due to her love for nature Emily made it one of her prominent themes as well. Other things such as the civil war, time and eternity, and death are presented as common themes. Most of her life was spent in seclusion, but this seclusion led to her beautiful writings,which influenced other poets and the literature world in general. Emily Dickinson will forever be recognized as an astonishing writer.
Although Emily Dickinson was a private person throughout her life, some critics gave a negative view to her work. For example, the work of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is dissenting toward the nineteenth century woman. Critics imply that this work of Dickinson had a negative influence on marriage and independent women. They believe the proper place for a woman was beside her husband, but a husbandless woman, according to Dickinson, was uncertain of herself. Although the independent woman has a life, she is literally speaking through a grave. She has been deceived, driven to her death, and has been abandoned.
“Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1). 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. During the rest of her life, she wrote prolifically by retreating to her room as soon as she could. Her works were influenced ...
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.
Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.
Throughout Emily Dickinson’s poetry there is a reoccurring theme of death and immortality. The theme of death is further separated into two major categories including the curiosity Dickinson held of the process of dying and the feelings accompanied with it and the reaction to the death of a loved one. Two of Dickinson’s many poems that contain a theme of death include: “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” and “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.”