"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."
biography
Emily Dickinson's reclusion made her one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of literature. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830. Her family lived on a homestead where she spent nearly the entirety of her life. After leaving primary school as a teenager, Dickinson attended Amherst Academy (Amherst College) and then Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year. After her brief studies, which she excelled in, she returned home, and stayed there for the remainder of her life. As she aged, she became increasingly reclusive, and much speculation surrounds the reasoning for this—obligation to take care of her ill mother, her own illness, anxiety, and devotion to writing are all debated reasons. Concerning her writing, she was most productive during this sequestered period, writing about 800 poems from 1858 to 1865, though she published little. Mysteriously, she remained in her isolated state until her death in 1886, of kidney disease. The vast majority of her poems were famously posthumously published after her sister, Lavinia, discovered them in her room. The defining characteristic of Dickinson's work is most certainly syntax, namely the dreaded "Dickinson dash." In many of her poems, there are more dashes than lines, which result in uncommon emphasis on words and phrases that otherwise would not affect the meaning of the work significantly. The brevity and subject matter of her work were unique as well—during Dickinson's time, most poets were writing transcendentalist, sensational epics, while she wrote short, couplet-sized pieces about animals, using them symbolically to discuss death, God, and society.
Click here to read "I Heard a Fly Buzz..."
Click here to read "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"
Click here to read "I Heard a Fly Buzz..."
Click here to read "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"