An Introduction to Emily Dickinson

1. An Introduction to Emily Dickinson Her life and poetry…

2. Her early life… • Born in Amherst, MA on December 10, 1830 • Her family had deep roots in New England • Grandfather founded Amherst College • Father was a state legislator • She was the youngest of 3 children; older brother, William and older sister, Lavinia

3. Education • Dickinson attended Amherst College and Mount Holyoke Seminary for Women • She excelled as a student at both places despite missing long stretches of the school year due to frequent illness and depression • The precise reasons for Dickinson's final departure from the academy in 1848 are unknown, but it is believed that her fragile emotional state probably played a role.

4. Early Writing Influences • Began writing poetry as a teenager • Early writing influences included Leonard Humphrey, principal of Amherst Academy, as well as family friend Benjamin Franklin Newton. • Newton introduced Dickinson to poetry of William Wordsworth, who served as an inspiration throughout her career

5. Early Writing Influences, cont. • Close friend and advisor, Susan Gilbert, who married William Dickinson in 1856 • The Dickinsons owned a large home on a great deal of land known as The Homestead • Susan and William moved to a home near The Homestead, where both Emily and her sister Lavinia lived for their whole adult lives; neither sister ever married

6. A Life of Seclusion and Isolation • Dickinson served as the chief caretaker for her ailing mother from the mid 1850’s until her mother’s death in 1882 • Scholars have also speculated that she suffered from conditions such as agoraphobia, depression and/or anxiety. • She also was treated for a painful ailment of her eyes. • After the mid 1860s, she rarely left the confines of The Homestead

7. Her Writing... • It was also during this time that Dickinson was most productive as a poet, filling notebooks with verse without any awareness on the part of her family members. • In her spare time, Dickinson studied botany and compiled a vast herbarium. • She also maintained correspondence with a variety of contacts. One of her friendships, with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, seems to have developed into a romance before Lord's death in 1884.

8. Dickinson’s Death • Dickinson died of kidney disease in Amherst, Massachusetts, on May 15, 1886 at the age of 56. • She was laid to rest in her family plot at West Cemetery. • The Homestead, where Dickinson was born is now a museum.

9. Her Writing… • Little of Dickinson's work was published at the time of her death, and the few works that were published were edited and altered to adhere to conventional standards of the time. • Unfortunately, much of the power of Dickinson's unusual use of syntax and form was lost in the alteration. • After her sister's death, Lavinia Dickinson discovered hundreds of her poems in notebooks that Emily had filled over the years. • The first volume of these poems was published in 1890, with additional volumes following. • A full compilation, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, wasn't published until 1955.

10. Theme and Tone • Like most writers, Emily Dickinson wrote about what she knew and about what intrigued her. • A keen observer, she used images from nature, religion, law, music, commerce, medicine, fashion, and domestic activities to probe universal themes: the wonders of nature, the identity of the self, death and immortality, and love. • Dickinson writes about her subjects with humor and pathos. • Remembering that she had a strong wit often helps to discern the tone behind her words.

11. Form and Style • Dickinson’s poems are relatively short poems with a single speaker (not herself) who expresses thought and feeling.  • As in most lyric poetry, the speaker in Dickinson's poems is often identified in the first person, "I."  • Dickinson reminded a reader that the “I” in her poetry does not necessarily speak for the poet herself: “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person” (L268).

12. Why No Titles? • Very few of Dickinson’s poems were titled • Fewer than 10 of her almost 1800 poems had titles • Her poems are now generally known by their first lines or by the numbers assigned to them by posthumous editors

13. One of Dickinson’s special gifts as a poet is her ability to describe abstract concepts with concrete images. • In many Dickinson poems, abstract ideas and material things are used to explain each other, but the relation between them remains complex and unpredictable. • **We’ll talk about his in our poem today.**

14. Punctuation and Syntax • Dickinson most often punctuated her poems with dashes, rather than the more expected array of periods, commas, and other punctuation marks.  • She also capitalized interior words, not just words at the beginning of a line.  Her reasons are not entirely clear. • The dash was liberally used by many writers, as correspondence from the mid-nineteenth-century demonstrates. While Dickinson was far from the only person to employ it, she may have been the only poet to depend upon it. • While Dickinson's dashes often stand in for more varied punctuation, at other times they serve as bridges between sections of the poem—bridges that are not otherwise readily apparent. • Dickinson may also have intended for the dashes to indicate pauses when reading the poem aloud.

15. Let’s read one together! • “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” • Poem #479