Preview

What makes Emily Dickinson So different from other poets during her century.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1140 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What makes Emily Dickinson So different from other poets during her century.
The Essence of Emily Dickinsons PoetryEmily Dickinson published exactly ten out of one thousand and eight hundred poems during her lifetime. Though a poetic genius of her time, Dickinson was suppressed and neglected. However, this in no way bothered Dickinson, she lacked all concern for an audience. The main reason for this being because she was an extremely private person. She wrote mostly for herself, and loved ones. What captures Emilys poetry is her emphasis on the topic of emotion and pain, the influence captured from subjects and events, and her unique style of mechanics.

Dickinson is known for the usage of emotion in her poetry. One topic she wrote about was death. Early on in Emilys career she was capable of pressing her reflections on the precise moment of death into remarkably concise expressions, stated Porter(67). In many poems, Dickinson doesnt just talk of death, she personifies it. An example is the poem Because I could not stop for Death. Dying is compared to an unexpected ride in a horse-drawn carriage(Daniel 391). Also, Dickinson thought the suffering involved in personal relationships captured the impulse of poetry(Chase 191). This idea of pain expressed in the poetry of Dickinson is seen in the poem Heart! We will forget him. In the following stanza:When you have done, pray tell meThat I may straight begin!Haste! Lest while youre laggingI remember him!(Johnson 5)We can tell that shes suffering from the memories of a past lover. Dickinson wants her heart to forget about him, so that her mind may do the same. All her life, Dickinson was never married, but spoke very often of a lover in her poetry. However, attempting to relate any of her love poems to a particular man will always be precarious(Chase 153). Although many of her poems speak of a passion for a man, it may not have necessarily been about her. Dickinson could have been writing about any womans life in a certain occasion. Pre-appointed pain was Dickinsons favorite area of feeling, how

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Massachusetts. Emily was raised and would eventually live her entire life in almost complete isolation. The few people Dickinson came into contact with were her family and Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Despite how cut off Dickinson was from the world, she still managed to read vivaciously and was influenced by many other poets. Another prominent influence in her poetry was her heavily Puritan background. Dickinson’s poems were only found upon her death and were later published by her…

    • 85 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The great Emily Dickinson is known for her inquisitive and powerful poems, but what made her poems so notable? Emily lived a simple life, mostly secluded, so why would some simple poems change how people thought about such difficult subjects? The answers are in her style of writing. Her seclusion allowed her to “meditate on life and death” and write about such controversial themes and topics that are still being discussed today (Allen 546). Her ability to highlight important words or phrases or cause a short pause or accentuate a certain phrase cause people reading her work to entirely stop and think about what they had just read. Emily Dickinson’s style, involving odd punctuation, unusual capitalization, and meticulous figurative language,…

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson is known as one of the most unique and influential poets of all time. Many of her poems are recognized for their deep meanings and dark tones. She often wrote about unconventional themes of death and immortality. Less than a dozen of her eighteen hundred poems were published while she was alive. Today, Dickinson is known as one of the greatest American poets for her eccentric and truth seeking pieces of literature.…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson had a sad life full with tragic experiences and its influences on her poetry can be seen in most of her works. During her life, she struggled with traumatic effects of a succession of deaths and due to this situation she spend the later half of her years in grief. The tragic deaths of people close to Dickinson have affected her writing and style of expression, in which death became a persisting theme of her poetry. Even though most of her poems consist directly on the subject "death", she also used unusual ways to write about this theme, by writing about immortality as a state of consciousness in an everlasting present. A typical example can be seen in her poems "Because I could not stop for Death", "I heard a Fly buzz when I died" and "I died for Beauty but was scarce".…

    • 2166 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Duhac, Joseph. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: An Annotated Guide to Commentary Published in English. 1890-1977. Boston: G.K. Hall. 327-331.…

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Growing up Dickinson took her young cousin into her room, pretended to lock the door and looked at her and said you now have freedom. Today it is believed she said this because she believed her room to be the place she had freedom to write, be herself and develop her great writing. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by two acquaintances pf hers, Thomas Higginson and Mabel Todd, they both edited the content and the released it to the public. After this release, a complete, and unaltered collection of Dickinson’s poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. In her writing Dickinson crafted a different type of persona for the first person. The speakers in her poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the no limitations. In her writing, she also created a specific elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. Despite things like some bad opinions from people over the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dickinson is now considered to be one of the most significant of all American…

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Emily Dickinson Outline

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I. Emily Dickinson was an introvert who wrote poems about life, love and death. Dickinson showed her feelings of death and Desire using unusual scenario’s that cause the reader to stretch their thinking and go beyond superficial thought. Emily Dickinson uses imagery, Form, and settings in her poems in “I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died” to set the tone of the poem.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson Pros/Cons

    • 1484 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In poetry, Dickinson is often fascinated by nature, death, pain, love and God. In her poems Dickinson often speaks elliptically. That said, when reading Dickinson's poems, we must dot the I's and cross the T's that we think are not L's. We must make our own interpretation because Emily would not have wanted us to interpret them at all. This is where the window is open to much criticism that maybe a pro or con to how others view Dickinson and her work. This is where we unknowingly hyperbolae words or phrases that should be litotilate.…

    • 1484 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Michael Salvucci Mrs. Comeau English 10 Honors Death, Pain, and the Pursuit of Peace Although Emily Dickinson’s poetry is profoundly insightful, her poems have a very confinedpan of subjects and themes. Most likely due to her early life and social reclusion, Dickinson’s poetry is limited to three major subjects: death, pain, and on a somewhat lighter note, nature. Dickinson’s poetry is greatly influenced by her early life as she led an extremely secluded and pessimisticlife. In her early adult years the poet spent one year studying at female seminary, from 1847 to 1848. Dickinson’s blunt pessimistic attitude is shown in a letter, written to a friend, as she says “I am not happy…Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have answered, and I am standing alone in rebellion.” (Meltzer 20-21) The poets self-described rebellious manner can be acclaimed to her residence featuring many politically active and dominant men, as her brother, father and grandfather were all attorneys with interest in politics. Again in a letter to a friend written during a political convention, Dickinson wonders “why can’t [she] be a delegate in the convention?” as she says “[she] knows all about the tariff and the law.” (Sewall 64-65) She recognizes the gender barrier in society and as a result Dickinson develops a unique style of poetry. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. (Lines 1-4) The speaker’s use of the word ‘kindly’ to describe death exemplifies his civil and considerate manner, but is his courteous character an illusion? Later in the poem the speaker writes: We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. (4-8) Because of death’s kindness in stopping for the speaker, she “put[s] away / [her] labor, and [her] leisure too,” (5-6), is death being true in taking her to heaven, or is he betraying her? There interposed a fly (9-12)…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Miss

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Death is a key theme in much of Dickinson's poetry. It is explored in depth in poems 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death' (712) and 'I heard a fly buzz' (465). 712 dramatises the conflict between a life and the peaceful eternity of death. Her close focus on death in these poems allows the reader to see death from different perspectives, in 712 death is almost portrayed as a welcoming gentlemen yet in 465 death appears to be an uncomfortable and almost claustrophobic experience.…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Emily Dickinson was a very creative poet, but what led her to her dark, depressing themes? It has been said that when Emily chose seclusion, all she did was write poems. Therefore, her seclusion caused her to be so creative. Dickinson felt free from women’s duties and had enough space to write in her room. This could be why she excelled in writing poems.…

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Emily Dickinson is one of the famous and fabulous female poets in the world. Her poems, for all their innovative brilliance, are nonetheless outpourings of her private feelings. And just like her great masterpieces, her enigmatic character will never fall into oblivion. Emily Dickinson’s poetry has been the focus of researchers, such as nature ,love and death. But one fourth of her poetry is about the theme of death. Obviously, death is her most beloving theme of her poems. Death is always the endearing topic of many artists and philosophers. While in Emily's eyes, death is different from others. In her eyes, death is not dead, death is beautiful , fantastic and mystical which most of us couldn't understand and imagine. So we want to probe…

    • 246 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson did not aspire to be a famous poet with such galvanizing poems. Dickinson simply wanted to express her feelings and frustrations, without the searching, judging eyes of those around her. Unfortunately, one of her frustrations happened to be that she fell in love with the wrong men, specifically ones that were already committed to other women. Within the poem, “Heart! I will forget him!”, she said,”You may forget the warmth he gave,”(1.3). This translates to Dickinson trying to convince her heart to forget about the man, or men, she had feelings for. Maybe even giving her heart permission to let him go, which represents her continuous cycle of attempting to let go or hold onto something that wasn’t meant for her. This characteristic…

    • 1063 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 to Edward and Emily (Norcross) Dickinson, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley and Amherst academy. She had two other siblings. Her brother, William Austin Dickinson, had preceded her by a year and a half and her sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson. She had only attended Holyoke for a year mainly due to her homesickness and the label of “no hope” given to her by the ministers at Holyoke. She had been fascinated by the transcendentalism movements and metaphysical poetry. Her life was a very secluded one spending most of her life at her home, a home that to her seemed a prison a theme that appeared in her works. Most of her true connections were through…

    • 1175 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the history of human kind, there have existed a significant number of poets, who did not care to write about “happy things.” Rather, they concerned themselves with unpleasant and sinister concepts, such as death. Fascination and personification of death has become a common theme in poetry, but very few poets mastered it as well as Emily Dickinson did. Although most of Dickinson’s poems are morbid, a reader has no right to overlook the aesthetic beauty with which she embellishes her “dark” art. It is apparent that for Dickinson, death is more than an event, which occurs at least once in a lifetime of every being. For her, death is a person, who will take her away with Him, when the right time comes,…

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics