How Did Emily Dickinsons Life Affect Her Poetry

Emily Dickinsons' poetry has been insanely popular since its original publications after her death in May of 1886, at the age of 55. She was originally published in 1890 by some of her acquaintances, who heavily edited and altered her work. Her poems were published in their unedited and original forms in 1955 and was claimed, after initial criticism, in the 20th century to be one of the great American poets and also an archetypical example of a cryptic, tortured artist. (Ramey, 173) Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. (DiYanni, 909) Much of her life attributed and affected how her poetry was written and edited by herself. Four major parts of her life, as I see, affected her culture and her writing. Emily Dickinson's isolation, her spirituality, her fascination with death,
These years show an increased productivity during the summer and spring in comparison to autumn and winter and during the winter months her thoughts and poems were drawn to death. (Ramey, 176) Another 4 year period shows a possible diagnosis of Bipolar II and hypomania. (Ramey, 175) Bipolar II is characterized by major depression and hypomania, which is a less severe stage of mania that is characterized by persistat euphoria or irritable moods with a increased productivity or creativity and usually is characterized by hypersexuality as well. (Ramey, 173) Dickinson's style went through a change which has been attributed to the hypomania as her metaphors changed and expanded and “created and experience that demanded a new kind of reading”. (Ramey, 176) Emily Dickinson's isolation from the world has also been theorized to be due to her illness (Norbert) or depression over her fathers death (Habegger, 562) and her mothers stroke and partial paralysis due to the stroke which happened a year after her fathers