Emily Dickinson
Though she was largely unknown outside of her father's small circle of literary friends, Emily Dickinson is now one of the best known American poets of the nineteenth century, and f the best known female poets of all time. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830, Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in that city. She was known to be incredibly reclusive and private, and did not leave the family home very often. She never married, and her poems were mostly unpublished until her sister discovered them after her death. Her poetry is often marked by its obscurity and the difficulty in knowing exactly what Dickinson meant. She also includes many capitalizations that can appear to be irregular and even random.
Many of her poems also focus heavily on nature themes mixed with religious imagery. One of her most famous poems that deals with this, and yet is very difficult to extract definite meaning from, is "There's a Certain Slant of Light," which is numbered 258 in the published edition of her complete works. This poem talks of light in winter and compares it to a cathedral, and says that both kinds are "oppressive." It is not easy to figure out exactly what Dickinson is saying in this poem, but much of her poetry seems to have the belief that organized religion is oppressive, where as nature and intrinsic feelings about God are liberating.
Many critics note that a religious crisis was probably the cause of Dickinson's decision to leave her school at Mount Holyoke and return to Amherst, and they credit this crisis with the view of religion that is shown in her poetry. Others also suggest a possible lesbian relationship with her sister-in-law and friend Susan, though the evidence here is ambiguous.
Quotes:
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -" bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw" door just opened on a street -- "
Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Ezra Pound's poem "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is inspired by Chinese poetry, and dramatizes the situation of the Chinese wife of a traveling salesman. In its empathetic portrayal of the life of a woman, it resembles poems by Emily Dickinson -- but the difference is, of course, that Pound's form is fundamentally dramatic. Pound announces, in his title, the speaker of the poem. Dickinson's lyric
Emily Dickinson and "The World is Not Conclusion" The poems of Emily Dickinson have been interpreted in a multitude of ways and often it is hard to separate the narrator of her works with the woman who wrote them. Few authors have such a close association between the individual and their work as Emily Dickinson. In Dickinson's poetry, the narrator and the poet are often seen as interchangeable beings. Themes that
" typical way in which a poem by Dickinson is structured is by the use of the "omitted center." This means that an initial statement is followed by an apparent lack in development and continuity and the inclusion of strange and seemingly alien ideas. However, these often contradictory ideas and images work towards a sense of wholeness and integrity which is essentially open-ended in terms of its meaning. "Often the
The study of geology becomes a central underlying theme in many of her works due to the influence of Hitchcock. Dickinson adopted the view that the study of nature should be an intermingled spiritual as well as naturalist journey, and as a result, places strong emphasis on how to explore spiritual and romantic Truth, through the allegory of nature and geology. Dickinson's poetic vision was not to advocate the strong
.. "I could not see to see" (from Dickinson, "465"). Words; phrases, and lines of poetry composed by Dickinson, within a given poem, are also typically set off, bookend-like (if not ruptured entirely at the center) by her liberal use of various punctuation "slices" (or perhaps "splices" is the better word) appearing most often in the form of either short and/or longer dashes (or combinations of these), e.g.: "-"; and/or
Emily Dickinson's poem 632 ("The Brain -- is wider than the sky -- ") is, in its own riddling way, a poem that grapples with the Christian religion, while at the same time being a poem about the poetic imagination itself. Dickinson's religious concerns are perhaps most evident when considering the form of the poem (and indeed the form of so many of her poems). The meter and the rhyme
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