Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American Poet, now considered as a powerful and popular literary figure in American Culture. She is known for her innovative and proto-modernist poetic style.
A Critic, Harold Bloom has placed her name in the list of major American poets. Her works are widely anthologized and she is a source of inspiration for artists today, especially those artists who are feminist-oriented.
Emily Dickinson’s poetry falls in three periods:
The poetry that has written before 1861 is conventional and sentimental in nature while the time between 1861 and 1865 is the most creative period when much of her creative work was written. This was the period when she wrote on the themes of life and mortality.
About two-third of Emily’s poetry was written after 1866.
Emily Dickinson’s poetry is taught in literature classes in the United States in middle schools and colleges. Several schools are also established in her name. Few journals, such as The Emily Dickinson Journal, are published in her name.
Many of her works have been translated into different languages including Spanish, French, Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Georgian, Mandarin and Kurdish etc.
A Short Biography of Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born into a prominent but not a wealthy family, on the 10th of December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States.
She studied English and classical literature, Latin, botany, geology, history, arithmetic and mental philosophy during her seven years at Amherst Academy. She was a well-behaved child and an excellent student. She then attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year.
Emily began writing at an early age and among those who influenced her to include Leonard Humphrey, a young principal of the Amherst Academy, and Benjamin Franklin, a family friend, who introduced her to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Wordsworth.
In 1855, Emily went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she befriended Charles Wadsworth, who remained a correspondent for a long time.
Susan Gilbert, Emily’s sister-in-law, was her best friend and many of Emily’s poems are written for Susan.
Emily Dickinson was a very reserved person, she rarely went out of the house. Among her, few acquaintances were Otis Phillips Lord, a judge in the Massachusetts judicial court, and Samuel Bowles, the owner of the Springfield Republican.
Emily never married and spent the later years of her life in seclusion. She died on 5th of May 1886, at the age of 55.
Little of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime. Her sister Lavinia discovered her poetry after her death. The first volume of her poetry was published in 1890.
The Dickinson family Homestead was turned into The Emily Dickinson Museum in 2003.
Emily Dickinson’s Writing Style
Emily Dickinson’s poems are lyrics, expressing thoughts and feelings. She was a keen observer and wrote about everything that she observed. Her themes are universal. Her style of writing is not a conventional one, she did not typically follow the poetic rules but had a unique writing style of her own.
There is no such theme that has not been discussed in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. She has talked about life, death and emotions which show her aesthetic intentions. Sometimes she wrote with humour while other times she used strong wit.
She had strong imaginative power, she used to dwell in her imaginary world for hours which seemed concrete to her. It would then lead her to write something unique.
The literary techniques that she has used in her poetry include irony, humour, puns and satire.
Emily’s unique style of expression added oddness to her writings which made her different from other poets of her time. She was a prolific and influential poet who focused more on her word choice rather than following the conventional syntax of writing poetry that made her popular even among today’s literary world.
Short lines
Emily writes short and brief lines that make her poetry compact. She conveys her idea in a small number of words. Her style is so compact that she delivers a great theme in a few numbers of lines that are not very lengthy but brief. Such as:
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed
A reader can understand the main idea of the poem by reading these two short lines.
Lack of Titles
Emily Dickinson’s poems do not have titles. The first line of her poems is used as the title for example, the poem Success is counted sweetest is actually the first line of the poem that is used as its title.
Slant rhyme
Though Emily uses perfect rhymes for second and fourth lines, she also sometimes uses slant rhymes, also called approximate rhyme, the rhyme that has similar but not identical sounds). For example in the below lines from Emily Dickinson’s “Not any higher stands the Grave”, Queen and Afternoon show an example of slant rhyme.
“This latest Leisure equal lulls
The Beggar and his Queen
Propitiate this Democrat
A Summer’s Afternoon –”
Unconventional Capitalization and Punctuation
Emily’s poetry has an unconventional use of Capitalization which emphasizes a particular theme and puts stress on it. This unconventional Capitalization and Punctuation sometimes slow down the pace and sometimes it speeds it up.
The extensive use of dashes in her poetry indicates pauses, to join two thoughts or to push them apart. It also shows her individual style of line break and makes her works unique. For example;
“Not any higher stands the Grave
For Heroes than for Men –
Not any nearer for the Child
Than numb Three Score and Ten –”
Grave, Men, Child and Ten are capitalized in the above lines. The excerpt also shows the use of dashes.
Major Themes
Emily has discussed a variety of themes in her works such as religion, home and family, death, nature and love.
She has talked about flowers and gardens in her poetry. She has associated flowers with certain emotions, for example, she associated gentias and anemones with youth and insight.
She has also discussed morbidity and death in her poetry. She has talked about different methods of death such as crucifixion, drowning, hanging, suffocation, shooting, stabbing etc.
She has also written Gospel poems in which she has addressed Jesus Christ and has reflected his teachings.
Form
She often uses the ballad stanza in her poems, a form which is divided into quatrains where the first and the third lines use tetrameter while the second and the fourth line use trimeter. The second line rhymes with the fourth line in such a way that the rhyme scheme becomes ABCB.
Meter
Emily’s use of meter is sometimes regular while oftentimes it is irregular. She has used Hymn Meters which includes tetrameter and trimeter but not iambic pentameter, while dimeter is less commonly used by her.
She has also used Ballad Meter which is a variant of Hymn Meter. It is conversational in nature and is less strict than the Common Meter.
She uses the Common Meter of eight syllables followed by a line of six syllables while writing a hymn, with an 8/6/8/6 pattern however unlike traditional hymns, she has liberated herself from the common meter. She uses enjambment and takes breaks where there are no syntactic pauses or line breaks. For example, in I cannot live with you, she has paused unconventionally.
The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –
