AUTHORS: Emily Dickinson
  Growing up, Emily Dickinson seldom left Amherst, a small New England town that preserved the church-centered ways of an older Puritan society. Her father, a lawyer, was a powerful man who dominated his family and achieved some priminence in politics, holding the position of treasurer of Amherst College for nearly forty years. To Emily, his sheer existence was an awesome force, but he paid little attention to what she or the world did. As Emily grew older, she grew more reserved and began to draw away from people. At age 32 she began to write poetry openly, at an incredible rate of a poem a day. During that year, Charles Wadsworth, a Presbyterian minister and the man Emily secretly loved, left for San Francisco. Although she only saw Wadsworth only three or four times, she was deeply stricken that he did not return her love for him. Around the time of his departure, Emily took to dressing entirely in white, a habit that may have unconsciously caused her retreat from society. During the last ten years of her life, she refused to leave her home to meet people. In time, her health left her and she died in 1886.


Four years after her death, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, a neighbor of the Dickinson's, published her work. In time, more of her work was published until a complete edition was published in 1955. Her poems reveal her to be a poet of major stature. While only seven of her poems were published while she was alive, the poems published achieved some popularity.


Many of Dickinson's poems seem rather simple on the outset, yet call out for a sensory reaction. Their subject, that of nature and the world surrounding us all, allows the reader to relate to the poem and experience what Emily felt when she wrote the poem. The rhythms are strongly based upon the hymns of churches. Dickinson's expression in her poems, however, is often abrupt and unnatural. This personal style gives Dickinson's poetry a vitality only she knew.

  

 

Updated on: Wednesday, August 26, 1998 02:23:37 AM