Emily Dickinson • Chaillie Wendt

* influenced poetry• Dec. 10, 1830• Amberst, Massachusetts• Brother, sister (middle child)• Successful family

*Lived with parents all but 1yr of her life

*Lost father, mother, nephew and a friend

• Died May 15, 1886 kidney disorder: Bright’s

Disease

Background info.• Spent most of life in the family house

called the Homestead• Her & her sister never got married

School:• Attended Amherst Academy from

1840-1846 helped to develop her poetry &

provided her with her 1st “Master”, Leonard Humphrey the principle. She left at age 15.

• To Mount Holyoke where she could pursue a higher, final level of education for women.

did not complete last 3 yrs at the Female Seminary

†Religion†• When divided into 3 catagories during a class“established christians” “expressed hope” & “no

hope” was her placement

• all those who want to be Christian rise… Emily remained seated, “They thought it queer I didn’t rise- I thought a lie would be queerer”…..

• Expressed to a friend “Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have answered, even my darling Vinnie believes she loves & trusts him & I am standing alone in rebellion”

Poetry consists of:• Startling imagery & excellent

vocab.• pain & joy, the relationship of self

to nature, spirituality, death (humor, honesty, curiosity), religion (piety & hostile)

• *Love poems of at least 1 women & several men

• not a confessional poet• Bible, classic English authors

(Shakespeare, Milton), Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, Emerson… Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, & Tennyson… George Elliot, Elizabeth Browning

Poetic Freedom Type of Writing…

• 7 beat lines broken into stanzas, alternating 4 & 3 beats

• form of like nursery rhymes, ballads, church hymns

• her poems are usually easy to memorize & follow, strongly rhythmical

• She crafted a new type of persona for the 1st person

• Likes to add dashes or syntactical fragments to her poems to add a sense of a deep pause

• has dramatic scenes, conflicts (boundaries) between life & death, very high understanding of definitions and detail

• Focus’s on speakers response to a situation rather than details of the situation itself

598[632]

pg. 104

The Brain – is wider than the Sky – For – put them side by side – The one the other will containWith ease – and You – beside –

The Brain is deeper than the sea – For – hold them – Blue to Blue – The one the other will absorb – As Sponges – Buckets – do –

The Brain is just the weight of God – For – Heft them – Pound for Pound – And they will differ – if they do – As syllable from sound –

1773[1732]

pg. 109

My life closed twice before it’s closed;It yet remains to seeIf Immortality unveilA third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceiveAs these that twice befell.Parting is all we know of heaven,And all we need of hell.

Emily’s work• she wanted to be published but only

had a few appear while she was alive• 52 poems written 1858• 366 in 1862• 53 in 1864

• 1,147 poems discovered in cherry wood cabinet by her sister after her death

• 1st volume of her poetry published in 1890, 4 years after her death, edited by Thomas H. Johnson

• Wrote anywhere from 1775-1800 poems on paper

Works cited• Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts are located in two

primary collections: the Amherst College Library and the Houghton Library of Harvard University. The poems that were in Mabel Loomis Todd’s possession are at Amherst; those that remained within the Dickinson households are at the Houghton Library.

• Dickinson Electronic Archives, http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/dickinson/

• Buckingham, "Poetry Readers and Reading in the 1890s: Emily Dickinson's First Reception," in Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, edited by James L. Machor (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 164-179.