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    Emily Dickinson: The Belle of Amherst

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    Alexandra Lezark
    Emily Dickinson was a renowned American poet born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived a reclusive life and published few of her poems during her lifetime. Dickinson wrote over 1,700 poems exploring themes of nature, spirituality, and love in an unconventional style using dashes and irregular meter. After her death, her poems were heavily edited by publishers before being recognized as masterworks that influenced many poets to come. Dickinson is now considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century alongside Walt Whitman.

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    Emily Dickinson: The Belle of Amherst

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Lezark
    103 views10 pages
    Emily Dickinson was a renowned American poet born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived a reclusive life and published few of her poems during her lifetime. Dickinson wrote over 1,700 poems exploring themes of nature, spirituality, and love in an unconventional style using dashes and irregular meter. After her death, her poems were heavily edited by publishers before being recognized as masterworks that influenced many poets to come. Dickinson is now considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century alongside Walt Whitman.

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    Emily Dickinson

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    Emily Dickinson was a renowned American poet born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived a reclusive life and published few of her poems during her lifetime. Dickinson wrote over 1,700 poems exploring themes of nature, spirituality, and love in an unconventional style using dashes and irregular meter. After her death, her poems were heavily edited by publishers before being recognized as masterworks that influenced many poets to come. Dickinson is now considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century alongside Walt Whitman.

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    103 views10 pages

    Emily Dickinson: The Belle of Amherst

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Lezark
    Emily Dickinson was a renowned American poet born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived a reclusive life and published few of her poems during her lifetime. Dickinson wrote over 1,700 poems exploring themes of nature, spirituality, and love in an unconventional style using dashes and irregular meter. After her death, her poems were heavily edited by publishers before being recognized as masterworks that influenced many poets to come. Dickinson is now considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century alongside Walt Whitman.

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    Emily Dickinson

    The Belle of Amherst


    This is my letter to the world,
    That never wrote to me,--
    The simple news that Nature told,
    With tender majesty.
    Her message is committed
    To hands I cannot see;
    For love of her, sweet countrymen,
    Judge tenderly of me!
    Biography

    Born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, MA.


    Educated at Amherst Academy.
    At 17, began college at Mount Holyoke Female
    Seminary; she became ill the spring of her first
    year and did not return.
    She would leave home only for short trips for the
    remainder of her life, leading scholars to speculate
    she may have been agoraphobic.
    Dickinson in Love?

    The Master Letters


    – Unknown man
    Samuel Bowles
    – Dickinson’s editor
    Susan Gilbert
    – Dickinson’s sister-in-
    law
    Was She Weird?

    Known for being a recluse, she didn’t leave


    her family’s homestead for any reason after
    the late 1860’s.
    She almost always wore white.
    She often lowered snacks and treats in
    baskets to neighborhood children from her
    window, careful never to let them see her
    face.
    Dickinson’s Poetry

    Regular meter—hymn meter and ballad


    meter, also known as Common meter
    – Quatrains
    – Alternating tetrameter and trimeter
    – Often 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, 2nd and 4th lines
    rhyme in iambic pentameter
    The use of dashes
    Influenced by nature and spiritual themes
    Dickinson’s Publishing Career

    Sent poems to Thomas Wentworth


    Higginson, a literary critic and family
    friend.
    He recognized her talent, but tried to
    “improve” them, which made Dickinson
    lose interest.
    At the time of her death, only seven of her
    poems had been published.
    Posthumous Publication

    After her death, her poems were heavily


    edited and published by Higginson and
    friend Mabel Loomis Todd.
    Thomas Johnson produced a collection of
    Dickinson’s more than 1700 poems in three
    volumes in 1955; he restored her original
    capitalization and punctuation.
    What’s the Difference?
    Because I could not stop for Death,
    BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
    He kindly stopped for me;
    He kindly stopped for me;
    The carriage held but just ourselves
    The carriage held but just ourselves
    And Immortality.
    And Immortality.
    We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
    We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
    And I had put away
    And I had put away
    My labor, and my leisure too,
    My labor, and my leisure too,
    For his civility.
    For his civility.
    We passed the school, where children
    We passed the school where children played,
    strove
    Their lessons scarcely done;
    At recess, in the ring;
    We passed the fields of gazing grain,
    We passed the fields of gazing grain,
    We passed the setting sun.
    We passed the setting sun.

    An excerpt of poem 712, or “Because I could not stop for Death, called
    “The Chariot” by Higginson and Todd. On the left is the edited version; on the right,
    the original. Note the major changes in lines 9 and 10.
    Dickinson’s Legacy

    Dickinson died May 15, 1886 of nephritis


    (kidney disease).
    Dickinson is considered influential to poets
    such as Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur,
    Archibald MacLeish, and William Stafford.
    Along with Walt Whitman, Dickinson is
    one of the two giants of American poetry of
    the 19th century.

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