Emily Dickinson: Poetry of Pain and Beauty in Heartbreak

In Emily Dickinson's lifetime, she was an unknown talent (except to a select few she had chosen to share her expressions of life with) that had only seven poems published while she was alive, and the poems that were published were probably all done so without her immediate knowledge or consent (Bloom 12). Her poems show two different sides of her: some an `irreverent little girl' and others `a grief-stricken, mature woman' (---. 8). When examining poems by Emily Dickinson, you see how the pain in her life and the heartbreak she felt and witnessed contributed to many of the over two thousand poems she wrote during her 56 years of life.

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830. She had two siblings: an older brother, Austin and a younger sister, Lavinia. Even though Emily Dickinson's literary popularity continues to grow, the majority of her life is still a mystery. We do know that she was a woman who lived in seclusion by her own choice. In 1862, she began living her life on what she considered her own terms, in private. As the years past, she withdrew more and more from social activities and very seldom had visitors.

Emily was a woman who loved reading and writing (5-7). The Dickinson family was a prominent family of Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily attended and graduated from Amherst Academy (the college which her grandfather helped start). She then attended South Hadley Seminary, where her father sent her to expand her education (8). While attending South Hadley, Emily experienced `worrisome emphasis on her spiritual condition', she was homesick and became physically sick (16-18). But her education played a major role not only in her life but also in her poems (8). She wrote about life as she experienced ...

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...those in the future cope with the same sufferings and loneliness that she had experienced in her life. If she had not been as educated, if she had not lived a life of seclusion or had she not been rejected in her life, we would not have the beautiful words of a genuine heart.

Works Cited

Bianchi, Martha Dickinson, ed. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1993.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Bloom's BioCritiques Emily Dickinson. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

---. Bloom's Major Poets: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide Emily Dickinson. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.

Johnson, Thomas H., ed. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1890.

Martin, Wendy, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002.