Emily Dickinson

The Belle of Amherst

Myth versus Reality

Born Amherst, MA, 1830Biography important in understanding some poems.Dickinson’s life has proven as enigmatic as her poems.Whole set of myths have sprung up around her– Recluse– Agoraphobic– Spurned by love– Possible lesbian love

The Homestead

The Dickinson Homestead with Garden

Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom

“The Soul selects her own society”

Emily Dickinson’s

Dress

Her Early Years

Second of three children.Her family well known for educational and political activity.Attended Amherst Academy, where she was very outgoing.After Amherst, attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, only to withdraw a year later due to severe homesickness.

Later yearsAfter leaving Holyoke, restricted herself to her home and seldom left it.Many speculations why she eliminated nearly all social contact– Disappointment in love– Her father’s death– Feeling better able to write

about a world she was not in

– Hypersensitivity

Love Affairs

Allegations of a love affair presumed to be a myth.Far from unusual for grown women to keep house as a primary occupation, neither marrying nor working outside the home, especially among relatively wealthy families in 19th-century Massachusetts.

Somebody Loves Me?

Some claim Dickinson disappointed in love, leading to withdrawal from society. Three candidates– Reverend Charles Wadsworth,

with whom she corresponded, – Samuel Bowles, editor of the

Springfield Republican, to whom she addressed many poems

– Susan Gilbert, sister-in-law

Hyper-sensitive Persons

Several professions associated with hypersensitivity.

Poets ActorsMusiciansArtistsWriters

Ways of CopingAlcohol, drugsExcessive sleepingOver eatingAvoidanceAloof, distantInsanitySeclusionPsychotherapySpirituality

The Lady in White

In later years Dickinson took to wearing primarily white.Sometimes would lower treats to children through her bedroom window, careful to never let more than her arms show.When asked how she occupied herself, she said, “You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself.”

Wren

Dickinson once described herself as “small, like the wren; and my hair is bold like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves.”

Legend and Counter-Legend

A life of rebellion against the social, moral and artistic conventions of the time

A “civil war” of the self against the

religious, familial and literary authorities

she sometimes sought to followForty-four sewn packets or ‘fascicles” of 1,775 poems found by her sister LaviniaThe “white nun of Amherst”

Dickinson’s Battles

Against the traditional concepts of an all-powerful GodResisted being converted“I stand alone in rebellion”Rejected a theology based on the absolutes of salvation and damnationAccepted the experiential discontinuity and linguistic ambiguity

Over 1800 PoemsPoems short and often deceptively simple.Common hymn rhythms – “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Amazing

Grace”

Demanded an open-ended view of life that comes through in both content and technique.– Unconventional punctuation

• Dashes

– Ambiguity

Dickinson’s Poetry

Short linesRegular meter & beatNear/Slant rhymesImageryQuirky, Humorous

Major Themes1. Death – What it is, means, feels like, and

how we deal with it and react to it.“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”“Because I could not stop for Death”

2. Individualism – Thought and creative thought “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”“The Soul selects her own Society”

3. Isolation – distance between people-because of death, misunderstanding, disagreement, anger“My life had stood—a Loaded Gun”

Major Themes, 24. Knowledge – ways of knowing the nature

of the mind/the human psyche“My life had stood a loaded gun”“The brain – is wider than the sky”

5. Success“I never lost as much but twice” “Success is counted sweetest”

6. Truth“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”

7. Friendship/love“One Sister have I in our house”

Major Themes, 3

8. Nature“A narrow Fellow in the Grass”“A bird came down the Walk—”

9. Poetry“This was a poet—It is That”“They shut me up in Prose”“Publication—is the Auction”

Publishing

Only a few poems published during Dickinson’s life time.At Helen Hunt Jackson's suggestion, Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers publishing house tried to get the poet to submit a volume of poems for publication in 1883; Dickinson declined.

The Dash

Dickinson liked to add long dashes to her poems.Greatly criticized for this tendency.Has become her trademark.

Dickinson’s Contradictions

Power of the Puritan heritage--undeniable– In the meter, the hymn– In the topics:

• death• faith and immortality• the uncertain relations between ecstasy and

terror, eroticism and renunciation, captivity and liberty

• the power and limits of language

Dickinson’s Second Battle

Against her father for intellectual independence– Nineteenth-century notions about

women and intellectual work– “Father … buys me many Books--but he

begs me not to read them--because he fears they joggle the Mind.”

– “Emily had to think--she was the only one of us who had that to do.”

Dickinson’s Poetic ConceptsNo abstract theory of poetry. Possibly unfamiliar with the poetic theories of Poe, Coleridge, Emerson, Whitman and Matthew Arnold. Her definition of poetry– "If I read a book and it makes my whole

body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"

Characteristics of Verse

Highly compressed, compact, “shy” of being exposed. Elliptical– Will say no more than she must.

Lyrics her highly subjective. – One-fifth of them begin with "I" – She knows no other consciousness.

Ambiguity & Concreteness

Ambiguity of meaning and syntax. – Higginson: "She almost always grasped

whatever she sought, but with some fracture of grammar and dictionary on the way."

Concreteness--poetry is as good as it is concrete. – Even when she is talking of the most abstract

of subjects, Dickinson specifies it by elaborating it in the concreteness of simile or metaphor.

Poetic Forms & Obscurity

Use of poetic forms such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance; also onomatopoetic effects Obscurity. – Higginson: "she was obscure, and

sometimes inscrutable; and though obscurity is sometimes, in Coleridge's phrase, a compliment to the reader, yet it is never safe to press this compliment too hard."

Nature

A fascination with nature consumed Dickinson. She summed all her lyrics as "the simple news that nature told“; she loved "nature's creatures" no matter how insignificant - the robin, the hummingbird, the bee, the butterfly, the rat. – Only the serpent gave her a chill.

Death

Many readers have been intrigued by Dickinson's ability to probe human death. Often adopts the pose of having already died before she writes her lyric. Looks straight at approaching death

Dickinson’s Poetry

Regular meter—hymn meter and ballad meter, also known as Common meter– Quatrains– Alternating tetrameter and trimeter– Often 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, 2nd and 4th

lines rhyme in iambic pentameter

The use of dashesInfluenced by nature and spiritual themes

Dickinson’s Publishing Career

Sent poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic and family friend.He recognized her talent, but tried to “improve” them, which made Dickinson lose interest.At the time of her death, only seven of her poems had been published.

Posthumous Publication

After her death, her poems were heavily edited and published by Higginson and friend Mabel Loomis Todd.Thomas Johnson produced a collection of Dickinson’s more than 1700 poems in three volumes in 1955; he restored her original capitalization and punctuation.

Dickinson’s Legacy

Died May 15, 1886 of nephritis (kidney disease).Considered influential to poets such as Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, Archibald MacLeish, and William Stafford.Along with Walt Whitman, one of the two giants of American poetry of the 19th century.