Emily Dickinson

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Emily Dickinson

• The Belle of Amherst

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This is my letter to the world,That never wrote
to me,-- The simple news that Nature told, With
tender majesty. Her message is committed To
hands I cannot see For love of her, sweet
countrymen,Judge tenderly of me!
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Biography

• Born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, MA.
• Educated at Amherst Academy.
• At 17, began college at Mount Holyoke Female
  Seminary she became ill the spring of her first
  year and did not return.
• She would leave home only for short trips for the
  remainder of her life, leading scholars to
  speculate she may have been agoraphobic.

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Dickinson in Love?

• The Master Letters
• Unknown man
• Samuel Bowles
• Dickinsons editor
• Susan Gilbert
• Dickinsons sister-in-law

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Was She Weird?

• Known for being a recluse, she didnt leave her
  familys homestead for any reason after the late
  1860s.
• She almost always wore white.
• She often lowered snacks and treats in baskets to
  neighborhood children from her window, careful
  never to let them see her face.

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Dickinsons Poetry

• Regular meterhymn 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 dashes
• Influenced by nature and spiritual themes

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Dickinsons 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.

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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
  Dickinsons more than 1700 poems in three volumes
  in 1955 he restored her original capitalization
  and punctuation.

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Whats the Difference?
BECAUSE I could not stop for Death, He kindly
stopped for me The carriage held but just
ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he
knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and
my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the
school where children played, Their lessons
scarcely done We passed the fields of gazing
grain, We passed the setting sun.
Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly
stopped for meThe carriage held but just
ourselvesAnd Immortality. We slowly drove, he
knew no haste, And I had put awayMy labor, and
my leisure too,For his civility. We passed the
school, where children stroveAt recess, in the
ringWe passed the fields of gazing grain,We
passed the setting sun.
An excerpt of poem 712, or Because I could not
stop for Death, called The Chariot by Higginson
and Todd. On the left is the edited version on
the right, the original. Note the major changes
in lines 9 and 10.
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Dickinsons Legacy

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