Emily Dickinson

Dickinson’s Life

• Born 1830

• Grew up in Amherst, Mass.

• Lived in the same house for almost her entire life (lived with prominent parents)

• Never married but had several relationships that influenced her writing.

• Myth that she was a “reclusive, eccentric, death-obsessed spinster” (p. 2554)

Dickinson’s Writing

• Only about 12 poems published during her lifetime- little known poet while she was alive

• Nearly 1800 poems and about 1000 letters written that survived

• Influence of current events on writing• Influence of own life on writing• Rebellion against conventional

expectations

Dickinson’s Style

• Complex lyrics: “compressed statements abounding in startling imagery and marked by an extraordinary vocabulary”

• Subjects: physic pain and joy, relationship of self to nature, intensely spiritual, intensely ordinary

• Transformation of traditional form in poetry

Dickinson’s Style

• Rhythm: drew from nursery rhymes that are strongly rhythmical and easy to memorize and recite

• Took closed forms and broke their rules

• Use of dashes and syntactical fragments “to convey her pursuit of a truth that could best be communicated indirectly”- went directly to the core through a fragment

Dickinson’s Style

• Enjambment- run past standard line or stanza break- creating “dizzying ambiguities”

• Use of “off” or “slant” rhymes• Compressed lyric as hallmark of modernist

poetry in 20th century • Focus on speaker’s response to a

situation rather than the details of the situation itself

Unique Style Features

• Dash: – Interupts text– Adds uncertainty– Indefinite endings– Guides the reader

• Capitalization– Influence of German language– Adds emphasis to words

1129

Tell all the truth but tell it slant –Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightening in the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind -