Poetry Is Just The Ash

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“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” (Leonard Cohen) As humans prosper through time and space, they neglect the miniscule details they endure, the veracity they have watched unfold before their eyes, and the revelations read that authors poured onto paper. When thinking about literature, poetry does not jump readily to attention, and amongst various compositions, will remain forgotten. Poetry itself, however, possesses some of the uttermost glorious writers of time, enticing thousands of readers with beautifully printed words. One of the considerably famous poets, Emily Dickinson, happens to have written nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime, shaping our society today with scripture written by her own hand. Miss Emily Dickinson, born on the 10th of December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, had an unusual lifestyle of seclusion beginning within her college years. (Biography Emily Dickinson, egs.edu) Although Dickinson had established herself as a successful student, showing a collection of proficiency in her studies, she found herself unable to attend the prestigious school of Amherst college, founded by her own grandfather, for the reason of her female gender. (Emily Dickinson’s Life, english.illinois.edu) After the denial, she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year until she wrote and requested her brother to bring her home “at all events.” (Biography Emily Dickinson, egs.edu) By this time, Dickinson had begun her path to seclusion as her melancholy and drab ways drifted her into a constant depressed state, as well as a sickly contingency that would follow her throughout the remainder of her life time. To apprehend these various pieces of informa...

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...uneasiness, if one would read between the lines, many readers could take her poems as a scared whimper from a guileless child. In Dickinson’s poem Will There Really Be A Morning?, her two small verses seem rather jolly and childlike, her idle mind wonders if " “Is there such a thing as day? // Could I see it from the mountains // If I were as tall as they?” (The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson, Bartleby.com), and, if observed correctly, the readers may see that Dickinson wonders about life the same as another human. The first line of the poem, however, shows the fear. It may seem as a harmless question, but it’s fate rests with the reviewer. Dickinson led her life with unease of death and what waited behind it’s dark curtain with God watching over her, and when numerous poems were turned over for publication after her death, her voice lived on throughout the rest of time.

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