Emily Dickinson
from Poets.org
In 1830, Emily
Dickinson was born in
Amherst,
Massachusetts. She
attended Mount
Holyoke Female
Seminary in South
Hadley, but severe
homesickness led her
Photo courtesy of Amherst College
to return home after
Library
one year. Throughout
her life, she seldom left her house and visitors
were scarce. The people with whom she did come
in contact, however, had an enormous impact on
her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly
stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth,
whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left
for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her
home in 1860, and some critics believe his
departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse
from Dickinson in the years that followed. While
it is certain that he was an important figure in
her life, it is not certain that this was in the
capacity of romantic love—she called him "my
closest earthly friend." Other possibilities for the
unrequited love in Dickinson’s poems include Otis
P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge,
and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield
Republican.
By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost total
physical isolation from the outside world, but
actively maintained many correspondences and
read widely. She spent a great deal of this time
with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson,
was actively involved in state and national
politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her
brother Austin attended law school and became
an attorney, but lived next door once he married
Susan Gilbert (one of the speculated—albeit less
persuasively—unrequited loves of Emily).
Dickinson’s younger sister Lavinia also lived at
home for her entire life in similar isolation.
Lavinia and Austin were not only family, but
intellectual companions during Dickinson’s
lifetime.
Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness and the
speakers of her poems generally live in a state of
want, but her poems are also marked by the
intimate recollection of inspirational moments
which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the
possibility of happiness. Her work was heavily
influenced by the Metaphysical poets of
seventeenth-century England, as well as her
reading of the Book of Revelation and her
upbringing in a Puritan New England town which
encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and
conservative approach to Christianity.
She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though
she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her
contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its
disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected
by the distinguished place they hold as the
founders of a uniquely American poetic voice.
While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet
and regularly enclosed poems in letters to
friends, she was not publicly recognized during
her lifetime. The first volume of her work was
published posthumously in 1890 and the last in
1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered 40
hand bound volumes of nearly 1800 of her
poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes
called. These booklets were made by folding and
sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and
copying what seem to be final versions of poems
in an order that many critics believe to be more
than chronological. The handwritten poems show
a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and
directions (some are even vertical). The poems
were initially unbound and published according to
the aesthetics of her many early editors,
removing her unusual and varied dashes and
replacing them with traditional punctuation. The
current standard version replaces her dashes
with a standard "n-dash," which is a closer
typographical approximation of her writing.
Furthermore, the original order of the works was
not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin
used the physical evidence of the paper itself to
restore her order, relying on smudge marks,
needle punctures and other clues to reassemble
the packets. Since then, many critics have
argued for thematic unity in these small
collections, believing the ordering of the poems
to be more than chronological or convenient. The
Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap
Press, 1981) remains the only volume that keeps
the order intact.
I taste a liquor never brewed
(214)
by Emily Dickinson
Liquor is a metaphor in this poem. What do you
think “liquor” represents in this poem? Remember the
literary movement we are studying!
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!
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Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –
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When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!
Because I could not stop for
Death (712)
_____________________________________________
What is Dickinson celebrating in this poem? How do
you know (Tone)?
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What is personification? How does Dickinson personify
death?
by Emily Dickinson
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 strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
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What is the tone of this poem? How does the
personification of death contribute to this tone?
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Time seems to slow down when Emily is with death.
Why do you think this happens?
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The Soul selects her own
Society (303)
Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
(249)
by Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —
Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —
I've known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —
My life closed twice before its
close (96)
by Emily Dickinson
My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile – the winds –
To a heart in port –
Done with the compass –
Done with the chart!
Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor – Tonight –
In thee!
She sweeps with manycolored brooms
by Emily Dickinson
She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
And leaves the shreds behind;
Oh, housewife in the evening west,
Come back, and dust the pond!
You dropped a purple ravelling in,
You dropped an amber thread;
And now you've littered all the East
With duds of emerald!
For Each Ecstatic Instant
And still she plies her spotted brooms,
And still the aprons fly,
Till brooms fade softly into stars
And then I come away.
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
I’ll tell you how the sun rose
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.
He Fumbles at your spirit
By Emily Dickinson
He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,
Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool,-Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.
When winds take Forests in their Paws-The Universe is still.
By Emily Dickinson
I'll tell you how the sun rose,
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"
........................
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while
Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.