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Emily dickinson poems compare and contrast
Emily dickinson poems compare and contrast
Emily dickinson poetry analysis
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Joshua Blake Aldridge
5/7/14
American Literature (Section C02)
Essay #2
Dickinson’s poetry and life
Emily Dickinson was a polarizing author whose love live has intrigued readers for many years. Her catalog consists of many poems and stories but the one thing included in the majority of them is love. It is documented that she was never married but yet love is a major theme in a vast amount of her poetry. Was there a person that she truly loved but never had the chance to pursue? To better understand Emily Dickinson, one must look at her personal life, her poems, and her diction.
First, Emily Dickinson poems are often under scrutiny since she was never married. As a poet who wrote so intently about love but was never married, she had to have had some form of inspiration. The fact that she wrote several love poems but never married may have caused more people to look into her personal life and see what drove the women to write such poems. Early Dickinson biographers identified George Gould as a suitor who may have been briefly engaged to the poet in the 1850s (Emily Dickinson's Love Life). Her lady friendships, notably with schoolmate and sometime later sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert and with their mutual friend Catherine Scott Turner Anthon, have also drawn interest with anyone observing Dickinson’s life, who argue whether their friendships represent just a normal kind of friendship or maybe something more resembling that of a sexual relationship (Emily Dickinson's Love Life). Biographers have attempted to find the main source for her intensity in her love poems, but no biographer has been able to identify specifically who the inspiration was for Dickinson's love poems (http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/ED303/emilybio.htm...
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...fted them to be an experience and journey to the reader. Though the world may never know why she chose not to marry, her vast collection of love poems and her other poems of different matters is what she is remembered by and carry on her legacy of being one of the best poets of her generation.
Works Cited
"Emily Dickinson's Love Life." Www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org. Trustees of Amherst College, n.d. Web. 04 May 2014. .
Woodlief, Ann M. "Biography of Emily Dickinson." Http://www.vcu.edu/. Virginia Commonwealth University, n.d. Web. 04 May 2014. .
"Major Characteristics of Dickinson's Poetry." Http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/. Trustees of Amherst College, n.d. Web. 04 May 2014. .
“Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1). Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once. During the rest of her life, she wrote prolifically by retreating to her room as soon as she could. Her works were influenced ...
Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.
Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
Most of Emily Dickinson’s poem do show a recurring theme of death. She either directly conveys this theme or she use metaphors to convey her message to the reader. Her word choice plays a crucial role in putting the entire piece together. How does Emily Dickinson reveal herself and understand the audience, simultaneously, through her word choice?
The life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.
During the late nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) featured as one of the few female poets in the largely male-dominated sphere of American literature. Although she authored 1800 poems, only seven were published during her lifetime - why? Emily Dickinson has always provoked debate; over her life, her motivations for the words she wrote and the interpretations of those words. It can be argued that Emily Dickinson herself, was as ambiguous, as misunderstood and as elusive as her poetry. As a outlet for relentless examination of every aspect of her mind and faith her poems are both expository and puzzling. Her conclusions are often cryptically implicit and largely dependant on the readers ability to put together the pieces - to see the connections and implications. Amy Lowell said "She was the mistress of suggestion....and to a lesser degree, irony" The ruses and riddles in her poems came from her; and as such she too was a riddle.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most well known poets of her time. Though her life was outwardly uneventful, what went on inside her house behind closed doors is unbelievable. After her father died she met Reverend Charles Wadsworth. She soon came to regard him as one of her most trusted friends, and she created in his image the “lover'; whom she was never to know except in her imagination. It is also said that it was around 1812 when he was removed to San Fransico that she began her withdrawal from society. During this time she began to write many of her poems. She wrote mainly in private, guarding all of her poems from all but a few select friends. She did not write for fame, but instead as a way of expressing her feelings. In her lifetime only six of her poems were even printed; none of which had her consent. It was not until her death of Brights Disease in May of 1862, that many of her poems were even read (Chelsea House of Library Criticism 2837). Thus proving that the analysis on Emily Dickinson’s poetry is some of the most emotionally felt works of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps it was because Emily Dickinson rebelled against everything society in the 1800s stood for. Richard Sewall even called her “An avowed pagen” (55). Many people think she suffered from depression and yet in that time it went untreated. When reading her poems, the reader can feel the angst, the sadness, and the violent thoughts on her place in society. The reader can imagine a world without the ability to vote or own property. Dickinson lived a life where the only education available was the conservative Calvinists schools her dad allowed her to attend, that she did not even believe in. Most people look forward to picking a school to attend. In Dickinson’s time people were merely told where to attend and what to learn. It really puts in perspective the hopes and wants that were never fulfilled because society deemed it too radical. Imagine being called a spinster in modern times, it is not even an insult. Yet, back then, it was almost a sin to be unmarried by age 25. During this time, it was considered outrageous for a female to be an author or an artist. Today, a person can be whatever they set their minds. Back then, women only had three choices: wife, whore, or
Emily Dickinson was affected by her life for several reasons. One of the reasons was that she was never married, though she went through many serious relationships, she never settled down.
Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.
Literary Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poetry. Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American history, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice. Emily Dickinson likes to use many different forms of poetic devices and Emily's use of irony in poems is one of the reasons they stand out in American poetry. In her poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she refers to 'Death' in a good way.
As one of the most famous introverts, Emily Dickinson internalized her volcanic emotions and turned them into literature. In this poem, she openly expressed her adoration towards Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, her sister-in-law, close friend, and role model. Dickinson illustrated a compelling, goddess-like image of Susan and revealed her own lack of confidence by utilizing a combination of parallelism, imagery, diction, and other poetic devices.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most well-regarded, and well-known American poets of today. Born in 1830s Massachusetts, she lived quite an introverted life, writing a collection of more than 1760 poems. She spent most of her early life in school, but later in adulthood, indoors, writing or reading literature. Many of her poems deal with life and death, and also immortality, with her poem, “I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died” not an exception. Emily usually does not give titles to her poems.
Dickinson was unique and the “exception” in creating a private relationship with her self and her soul. In “Emily Dickinson and Popular Culture”, David S. Reynolds, a new historicism critic, wrote that it 's no surprise that the majority of Dickinson 's poetry was produced between 1858-1866, “It was a period of extreme consciousness about proliferation of varied women 's role in American culture.” It was a time where women were actively searching for more “literary” ways of self expression” (Reynolds 25). Dickinson was able to express her ideas and beliefs as a woman, something that was scandalous during this time period.
Emily Dickinson grew up as a New England Puritan. The values she was taught were all but revealed in the poetry she wrote. How could such strict Puritan parents raise a child to express such anti-Puritan values in her writing as Emily Dickinson did? That question has recently become invalid now that scientists have discovered that Emily Dickinson indeed had a twin sister to whom the credit for all of the poetry is now given. How and why did such a disgrace take place, you ask? It was a complicated situation-one which would probably never happen today!