Biography
A life-long resident of Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson
left her hometown for only one year, when she attended Mt.
Holyoke Female Seminary. She was raised in an intellectual
and socially prominent family and at the age of eighteen
had received a better formal education than most of her American
contemporaries, both male and female. Yet Dickinson led a
largely sequestered existence, and she devoted much of her
time to writing poetry, producing close to eighteen hundred
poems, which were characterized by terse lines, "slant" rhymes,
and keen observation. Although most of Dickinson's work was
not published in her lifetime, she did see three small collections
of poems printed (1890, 1891, and 1896). A half-century later,
the three volumes of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955)
and two volumes of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958)
appeared.
Explorations
Read as a group, Dickinson's poems seem to resist the masculinist
poetics laid down by Emerson earlier
in the nineteenth century--the idea that the "bard" must
achieve dominion over experience and offer vast, coherent,
overarching themes. Dickinson's experience of the world,
through her poetry, seems more open-ended: dark moments commingle
with hopeful ones, and poems that celebrate the small ordinary
experience share space with poems that are mystical or overtly
adventurous and speculative.
1. Read carefully several poems which convey high excitement,
even ecstasy: for example, poems 214, 249, 528, 1072. What
perceptions, hopes, or intuitions seem to underlie these
celebrations? What is the effect of reading them alongside
some of Dickinson's darker verses: for example, poems 67,
280, 341, 449, 465, 650, 712?
2. A number of these poems engage the natural world
immediately around the Dickinson house: for example, poems
130, 285, 314, 328, 348, 824, 986. Describe Dickinson as
a nature poet. Is she in the American Transcendental tradition?
Is she a Romantic? What variations do you see in the tone
and theme of these poems?
3. Dickinson's poems often engage, directly or subtly,
with her own solitude and anonymity as an artist. Describe
the variety of ways and moods in which this situation is
addressed.
4. The Dickinson legend has loomed large in the reading
of her poems. There is dramatic appeal in the tale of this
brilliant artist living and dying out of the limelight
and in the story of the discovery and gradual publication
of the poems, their impact on the Moderns, and the eventual
establishment of accurate and available texts. To what
extent do you think we should bear in mind the Emily Dickinson
biography, and the Emily Dickinson legend, in rereading
the poems now?
Other sites to consult:
Emily
Dickinson. A major site for online resources
on Dickinson, created by Paul E. Black. Includes
a biography and timeline; a discussion list; and
links to poems and epigrams by Dickinson, among other
items.
Dickinson
discussion lists. Made available by the Emily
Dickinson International Society. Includes a link
to the Emily Dickinson Journal.
Selected
letters of Emily Dickinson. Twenty letters
written by Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Emily
Dickinson. Notes on Emily Dickinson and her
poetry with a biography, bibliography, and links
from the PAL: Perspectives in American Literature site
maintained by Paul P. Reuben (California State University,
Stanislaus).
Class
notes and biography. From Mary Anne Andrade's World
Literature II course. Includes a psychoanalytical
analysis of Dickinson's poems.
John
Ravert's Emily Dickinson page. A site out
of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania that includes
a biography, an interpretation of Dickinson's "I've
seen a dying eye," and an essay on "Literary Criticisms
of Emily Dickinson's Poetry."
"Emily
Dickinson (Un)discovered". A belated apology
from the Atlantic Monthly for failing to recognize
Dickinson as an important poet.
Unfastening
the Fascicles. A roundtable on Dickinson
from the 1997 Modern Language Association meeting;
includes online versions of three of the papers
given.
Emily
Dickinson and Contemporary Art. A fascinating
exhibition at Amherst College (March 28-June 1,1997).
http://www.bartleby.com/people/DickinsoE.html: The complete
poems of Emily Dickinson, as well as other materials, from
Project Bartleby.
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=156&CFID=9020342&CFTOKEN=13372336:
The Academy of American Poets’ Emily Dickinson page.
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/edis/edisindex.html: The Emily
Dickinson International Society.
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