Download An Introduction to Emily Dickinson

Her life and poetry…
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Born in Amherst, MA on December 10, 1830
Her family had deep roots in New England
◦ Grandfather founded Amherst College
◦ Father was a state legislator
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She was the youngest of 3 children; older
brother, William and older sister, Lavinia
Dickinson attended Amherst College and
Mount Holyoke Seminary for Women
 She excelled as a student at both places
despite missing long stretches of the school
year due to frequent illness and depression
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The precise reasons for Dickinson's final
departure from the academy in 1848 are
unknown, but it is believed that her fragile
emotional state probably played a role.
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Began writing poetry as a teenager
Early writing influences included Leonard
Humphrey, principal of Amherst Academy, as
well as family friend Benjamin Franklin
Newton.
Newton introduced Dickinson to poetry of
William Wordsworth, who served as an
inspiration throughout her career
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Close friend and advisor, Susan Gilbert, who
married William Dickinson in 1856
The Dickinsons owned a large home on a
great deal of land known as The Homestead
Susan and William moved to a home near The
Homestead, where both Emily and her sister
Lavinia lived for their whole adult lives;
neither sister ever married
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Dickinson served as the chief caretaker for
her ailing mother from the mid 1850’s until
her mother’s death in 1882
Scholars have also speculated that she
suffered from conditions such as
agoraphobia, depression and/or anxiety.
She also was treated for a painful ailment of
her eyes.
After the mid 1860s, she rarely left the
confines of The Homestead
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It was also during this time that Dickinson
was most productive as a poet, filling
notebooks with verse without any awareness
on the part of her family members.
In her spare time, Dickinson studied botany
and compiled a vast herbarium.
She also maintained correspondence with a
variety of contacts. One of her friendships,
with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, seems to have
developed into a romance before Lord's death
in 1884.
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Dickinson died of kidney disease in Amherst,
Massachusetts, on May 15, 1886 at the age of
56.
She was laid to rest in her family plot at West
Cemetery.
The Homestead, where Dickinson was born is
now a museum.
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Little of Dickinson's work was published at the time
of her death, and the few works that were published
were edited and altered to adhere to conventional
standards of the time.
Unfortunately, much of the power of Dickinson's
unusual use of syntax and form was lost in the
alteration.
After her sister's death, Lavinia Dickinson discovered
hundreds of her poems in notebooks that Emily had
filled over the years.
The first volume of these poems was published in
1890, with additional volumes following.
A full compilation, The Poems of Emily Dickinson,
wasn't published until 1955.
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Like most writers, Emily Dickinson wrote about
what she knew and about what intrigued her.
A keen observer, she used images from nature,
religion, law, music, commerce, medicine,
fashion, and domestic activities to probe
universal themes: the wonders of nature, the
identity of the self, death and immortality, and
love.
Dickinson writes about her subjects with humor
and pathos.
Remembering that she had a strong wit often
helps to discern the tone behind her words.
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Dickinson’s poems are relatively short poems
with a single speaker (not herself) who
expresses thought and feeling.
As in most lyric poetry, the speaker in
Dickinson's poems is often identified in the
first person, "I."
Dickinson reminded a reader that the “I” in
her poetry does not necessarily speak for
the poet herself: “When I state myself, as the
Representative of the Verse – it does not
mean – me – but a supposed person” (L268).
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Very few of Dickinson’s poems were titled
Fewer than 10 of her almost 1800 poems had
titles
Her poems are now generally known by their
first lines or by the numbers assigned to
them by posthumous editors
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One of Dickinson’s special gifts as a poet is
her ability to describe abstract concepts with
concrete images.
In many Dickinson poems, abstract ideas and
material things are used to explain each
other, but the relation between them remains
complex and unpredictable.
**We’ll talk about his in our poem today.**
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Dickinson most often punctuated her poems with dashes,
rather than the more expected array of periods, commas,
and other punctuation marks.
She also capitalized interior words, not just words at the
beginning of a line. Her reasons are not entirely clear.
The dash was liberally used by many writers, as
correspondence from the mid-nineteenth-century
demonstrates. While Dickinson was far from the only
person to employ it, she may have been the only poet to
depend upon it.
While Dickinson's dashes often stand in for more varied
punctuation, at other times they serve as bridges between
sections of the poem—bridges that are not otherwise
readily apparent.
Dickinson may also have intended for the dashes to
indicate pauses when reading the poem aloud.
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“Because I Could Not Stop For Death”
Poem #479