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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
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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 contain With 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 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.
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.