Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
1830–1886
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her brother, Austin, who attended law school and became an attorney, lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia, also lived at home, and she and Austin were intellectual companions for Dickinson during her lifetime.
Dickinson’s poetry 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 rumors 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.
Today, Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous American poets, whose work you almost certainly encountered at some point in your school years. Dickinson was a trailblazer in poetry, incorporating an intimacy and immediacy to her poetic voice that was wholly new and exciting, conflating personal and inscrutable interior desires and memories with universal imagery that made them seem shared, like secrets between friends. You might not always understand what Dickinson was specifically thinking of when composing a poem, but you always feel like it speaks to something you have experienced yourself.
All great literature stems from the life experience of the artist, their emotional journey, and their interpretation of events. In Dickinson's poetry, you get a sense of who she was as a person: intelligent, curious — and sad. If all you know about Dickinson is that she existed and that you can sing all of her poems to the tune of the Gilligan's Island Theme Song, you might not know that her poetry's rich emotional palette stems from a life filled with sadness and loss.
If Emily Dickinson's poetry hadn't been published after her death, she might have remained little more than a local legend. Born into a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts, she never left her family home and was referred to as "The Myth" or "The Lady in White" around town. Although obviously intelligent and enjoying many close relationships throughout her life, Dickinson was considered at the time to be a classic spinster — a woman who never married — and, later in life, a recluse.
She was also frequently unwell, suffering at different times in her life from respiratory illnesses and troubles with her eyesight. But author Lyndall Gordon writes in The Guardian that there is evidence Dickinson suffered from another lifelong affliction: epilepsy.
Gordon notes the near-constant reference to illness and the brain in her poetry, and the prescriptions written for her by her family physician are in line with 19th-century treatments of what was then called the Falling Disease. This would also explain Dickinson's frequent absences from school as a child — and her reclusive nature. At the time, epilepsy was still widely misunderstood, and epileptics were often considered to be evil, violent, or otherwise impaired. If a member of a prominent family suffered from the ailment, they would be very likely to try their best to conceal it — which might require that they stay inside, hiding.
Emily Dickinson's love life is a fascinating subject. For a woman who was reclusive and socially isolated, her poems brim with passion and references to mysterious objects of her affection, and as The Rumpus notes, she wrote — though possibly never sent — three infamous (and steamy) letters to an unknown person she referred to as her "Master." She forged several very deep relationships with men over the course of her life, but there is another, even more tragic possibility: that Emily Dickinson was in love with a woman at a time when such relationships were beyond impossible.
Author Martha Nell Smith writes that Dickinson's unusually close relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, was very likely a romantic one. They lived next door to each other and wore a deep path between the houses with their frequent visits, and they enjoyed an intense correspondence of letters and passed notes that writer Maria Popova describes as "electric love letters" and The New York Times describes as having "an intensity that some might view as erotic."
It's impossible to know whether Emily and Susan truly had a romantic relationship, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling. If it's true, they would have had to keep their relationship secret from everyone, especially Susan's husband — Dickinson's own brother.
EMILY DICKINSON REMAINED ANONYMOUS
Emily Dickinson/Wikimedia Commons
The world simply wasn't ready for Emily Dickinson's unique brand of poetry, and she actually made very little formal effort to publish her work. The level of interest she had in traditional publication is open to debate, but as The New Yorker writes, her disinterest in official publication doesn't mean she didn't want her poetry to be read (her deathbed order to burn her poems aside). She sent many poems to friends, for example, and even tried her hand at self-publishing with hand-bound collections. She produced 40 such books during her life.
The tragedy is that Dickinson died without recognition for her work. Only ten of the nearly 1,800 poems she wrote were published in her lifetime, and those were published anonymously and were heavily edited in ways that removed everything that made them hers — including giving them titles and rhyme schemes that turned them into prettier but less interesting works. For example, Dickinson scholar Thomas H. Johnson notes that her poem "I taste a liquor never brewed" was printed in The Republican in 1861, but the editor gave it a different title and introduced a traditional rhyme scheme to replace Dickinson's more sophisticated "slant" rhyme. Nothing could be more depressing to a writer than to see their work so fundamentally changed, which might explain her disinterest in publication.
Selected Poems by EMILY DICKINSON
Because I could not stop for Death
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 –
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -
3. Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
4. The Heart Asks Pleasure First
The heart asks pleasure first
And then, excuse from pain-
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;
And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.
5. Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
6. Wild nights - Wild nights!
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 but moor - tonight -
In thee!
7. My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master’s Head -
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I’m deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -
8. A Bird, came down the Walk - (359)
A Bird, came down the Walk -
He did not know I saw -
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass -
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass -
He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad -
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head. -
Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home -
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.
9. I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340)
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
10. I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260)
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!