Final Draft
Emily Dickinson got inspiration from those who went before her. Her poetry covers many aspects of life and is intertwined with her own life. Even in the twenty-first century, Emily Dickinson remains one of the most admired women poets in America. "The Dickinson poems about which I shall be speaking tell a story predicted on dialectic: this life versus the next; the pleasures of love and sexuality versus a more chaste and bodiless devotion; the demands of the self versus their capitulation to the world’s otherness." (Cameron 100)
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was Edward Dickinson and her mother was Emily Norcross Dickinson. She lived with her mother, father and sister Lavinia. She also had a brother William Dickinson and his wife Susan Dickinson (Susie) who lived next door. She went to school at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and other schools. She had a very busy childhood and then she went on a trip to Washington and came back a whole different person. After that she completely changed and became very antisocial and stayed in her parents’ house. (Johnson v)
Dickinson thought she was a pretty good poet of her time. She admired famous women writers such as George Eliot and especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Emily even owned a portrait or two of Mrs. Browning and was sent a photograph of her grave. Emily was very intrigued by the things that she knew and would tell her friends. She was very interested in women and she tended to use her femininity in papers but did not use it in her poetry. She was able to put down her problems and her power of being a woman and write her poetry without using wording against men. (Homans 129&131)
Emily Dickinson never used periods, but when she did use them, it was a sign of irony. When Emily wrote like any other writer, it was like telling a story. Poetry has its own language, with Dickinson she believed in relativity. Relativity can only work with contrast of the poem, so she contrasted things together, that is one of the reasons why some people do not understand what she means when she describes something in her poems. In one of her poems she "killed the integrity of the flame as the poem names it denies the possibility of belief." (Diehl 150). Dickinson used memories of her childhood in her poetry as well as questions and answers. She also used different moods and "experiments that prove against the possible" (Diehl 150)
Emily was very depressed and lonesome when she was growing old. Her depression, she called "the abyss". She talks about in some of her poetry the depths of terror and destruction. She says in one of her poems, "As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident." So she was very sad for some reason, and she tells it through her poetry. I think one of the reasons why she was depressed was because she took an interest in her brothers’ wife Susan who was also her best friend. Yes she had boyfriends in the past, but I think she just kind of turned and fell head over heels in love with her sister-in-law. Possibly why she was so depressed is because she could never really BE with Susan. In some of her poetry she describes nights with Susan and loving her so passionately, but she resented her brother for marrying the love of her life. (Diehl 151)
Emily Dickinson was religious within some part of her life, but then she decided to go along with what she felt. She told her mentor that her family was religious but she was not. Dickinson was apart from her family. She believed that there was something bigger than just them, then just god. She wrote poems and letters about such things as god and religion but, she commented on them about how they were not realistic. Emily Dickinson believed in something, it just wasn’t the god that everyone knows and thinks about. (Felstiner)
The definition of ample is more than enough in size or scope. Emily liked to use ample a lot in her poetry. In fact she used it about eight times. She used ample to tell about how writing denotes the paradox. Instead of using some word, she used ample in place of it, and so it became a definition. Emily was very good at using different words to make a line in a poem sound better, which is why she is one of the best poets of all time. (Beebe)
Dickinson had her own personal 1844 Webster’s Dictionary which she used all the times. She would read it when she needed to find a word, or she would just read through it and try to figure out what she could use in later times. Since Dickinson had this famous dictionary that she used, she had started up a new trend, so that was when the definition poem was created. Her definition poem ranged from essentials to anti-definitions. She was intrigued so much to find indefinable words and experiences like immortality. (Beebe)
Like said before, Emily Dickinson was a very lonely woman and depression seemed to overtake her. Often she would mail a flower with the letter she was writing, to the family who lost the friend or loved one. She once sent a riddle and a cocoon attached to it to her nephew. She got very involved with many people, and she was very sad and lonesome when some of her friends and people she admired had died. She even wrote poetry for some people that had died like Susie’s niece, Susie’s sister Harriet Cutler, and Thomas Higginson’s infant. She cared for many people in her lifetime, but she never really got anything back from anyone else. (Beebe)
One of Emily Dickinson’s unnamed poems was put into the Valentine’s Day 1866 newspaper. She was asked if it could be put in the newspaper by the editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican and her friend, Samuel Bowles. Samuel decided to name it Snake because it says "the grass divides as with a comb…" so it is being described as a snake, so he thought that it would be the perfect name. This poem was one of the only poems that she had printed out while she was still alive. (Felstiner)
As said before, Dickinson was a very grim and sad soul. She went through her life as a very odd and unusual person. She was in love with her sister-in-law (Susie), and she had a fancy for different kinds of women writers. She was probably very misunderstood and that may be another reason why she was so sad. Many people I know including myself somehow get out their anger and/or problems. Like me, Emily would write her feelings and problems out on a piece of paper. The poem that I unfortunately do not have the title to, shows how Emily might have been a little unhinged and unhappy when she wrote it.
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons-
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes-
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us-
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings, are-
None may teach it-Any-
‘Tis the Seal Despair-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air-
When it comes, the Landscape listens-
Shadows-hold their breath-
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death-
(Johnson 37)
Emily Dickinson wrote some of my favorite poems, and she has left a lifetime of remembrances of others, all over the world. She is most definitely my favorite poet, and people will be reading her poetry for years to come. (Felstiner)
Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1886 after fighting a two-year illness. After her death, her family found her "stash" of poetry and published sections of some of it. At her burial, Susan prepared her body. She put a variation of bright colorful flowers on her body and on her coffin. Emily had a wish for when she died. She wished that she would be carried out the back door of her house, through her garden and out into a field of grain. She was an amazing woman and she will be remembered forever. (Felstiner & Johnson)
