The Implicit Intimacy of Dickinson's Dashes
The dash in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, initially edited away as a sign of incompletion, has since come to be seen as crucial to the impact of her poems. Critics have examined the dash from a myriad of angles, viewing it as a rhetorical notation for oral performance, a technique for recreating the rhythm of a telegraph, or a subtraction sign in an underlying mathematical system.1 However, attempting to define Dickinson’s intentions with the dash is clearly speculative given her varied dash-usage; in fact, one scholar illustrated the fallibility of one dash-interpretation by applying it to one of Dickinson’s handwritten cake recipes (Franklin 120). Instead, I begin with the assumption that “text” as an entity involving both the reading and writing of the material implies a reader’s attempt to recreate the act of writing as well as the writer’s attempt to guide the act of reading. I will focus on the former, given the difficulties surrounding the notion of authorial intention a.k.a. the Death of the Author. Using three familiar Dickinson poems—“The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” “The Soul selects her own Society,” and “This was a Poet—It is that,”—I contend that readers can penetrate the double mystery of Emily Dickinson’s reclusive life and lyrically dense poetry by enjoying a sense of intimacy not dependent upon the content of her poems. The source of this intimacy lies in her remarkable punctuation. Dickinson’s unconventionally-positioned dashes form disjunctures and connections in the reader’s understanding that create the impression of following Dickinson through the creative process towards intimacy with the poet herself.
This implicit intimacy becomes clear ...
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...ickinsonÂ’s highly personal notations. Ironically, what at first seems an idiosyncratic stylistic effect operates to create a deep sense of intimacy between the reader and the creative process of a highly reclusive individual. Far from distancing the reader, the dash actually provides a gateway between the act of reading and the poetÂ’s moment of creation, only possible if we view the text as a shifting co-creation of reader and poet.
Works Cited:
Edith Wylder, The Last Face: Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971).
Jerusha Hall McCormack, “Domesticating Delphi: Emily Dickinson and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph,” American Quarterly 55.4 (2003) 569-601.
Michael Theune, “’One and One are One’…and Two: An Inquiry into Dickinson’s Use of Mathematical Signs,” The Emily Dickinson Journal 10.1 (2001) 99-116.
“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 ...
any scholars shudder at the idea of dissecting any of the simple, yet strikingly complex, poems of the great American author Emily Dickinson. When a reader first views one of the multitudes of Dickinson’s texts, their first response is one of simplicity. Due to the length of her poetry, many people believe that they will turn out to be simple. Yet, once someone begins to read one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, it does not take long to realize the utter complexity of the text. As said by Wiggins, author of Prentice Hall’s, American Experience Volume 1, “Dickinson’s poetry was printed as she had meant it to be read, and the world experienced the power of her complex mind captured in concrete imagery and simple but forceful language.” Through this,
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.
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.
...r works, and certainly, the more the traditional the establishment, book or website, the more invisible this possibility becomes. Since Dickinson's works were unintended for publication, the public is entitled via her family to make their own assumptions about her and her work. I contend that the writing style of Dickinson's letters and poetry was conceived with genius, edited and re-edited with that same genius. To take pen to her works, which are by their nature, concise and spare in language, but rich in symbolism, ingenuity, punctuation and grammatical engineering is an insult to her work, and frankly few would succeed in retaining that genius unless merely replacing gender indicative words and imagery.
Dickinson’s over abundant use of the hyphen is to put more voice into, to let the public know it’s her voice, technically being her “signature” as Kamilla Denman states. However, many conclude that the use of the hyphen signifies stress, which is considered to be a “female habit” (Denman). On the other hand, this poem uses the hyphen to enable a certain pause after each line to enhance the depth of her writing or message. In essence with that statement, the hyphen is just “as important as a period” since it does strengthen the psychological themes and moral of this
Sometimes known as one of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson has made a name for herself in American literature books throughout the world. Dickinson’s work has become increasingly popular over the last century; only being truly discovered in 1955. Since then Dickinson’s work has been the study of many philosophers and literary critics; who strive to understand Dickinson’s poetry with little help coming from the now deceased author. Emily Dickinson was born December 10th, 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts. Dickinson lived a rather normal childhood
Emily grew up with a privileged childhood. She was the eldest daughter of Edward Dickinson, a successful lawyer, member of congress, and for many years treasurer of Amherst College. Her father gave here the time, and literary education, as well as confidence to try her hand at free verse. Emily’s mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was a submissive, timid housewife dedicated to her husband, children, and household chores. The Dickinson’s only son, William Austin, also a lawyer, succeeded his father as treasurer of the college. Their youngest child, Lavina, was the chief housekeeper and, like her sister, Emily, remained a home, unmarried, all her life. A sixth member who was added to the family in 1856 was Susan Gilbert, a schoolmate of Emily’s, who married Austin and moved into the house next door the Dickinson home which they called Homestead. Emily and Susan were very close friends and confidantes, until Susan and Austin’s marriage. It was at this time that Susan stopped responding to the notes and poems that were often exchanged between the two ( ). Emily’s letters to Susan have contained lines that have proved to be controversial when interpreted.
The poetry of the Imagists is short, simple, and quite literal in its meaning in order to create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. When they describe an object, it means just what they say. A tree is a tree, a flower is a flower, and a bird is a bird. Imagists have little use for abstract words or ideas, and tend to shy away from them as much as possible. Emily Dickinson doesn’t fall under the same category as the Imagists, as she doesn’t use the same techniques as the Imagists.
Black South Africans were treated unjustly through racial discrimination, unfair laws and segregation. These injustices eventually led to racial tensions and even violence. The autobiography of one South African and other
On September 19, 2008 David Goldman, a staff writer for CNNMoney.com, reported that The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) placed a temporary ban on the short selling of financial companies’ securities. The action was taken as a defensive maneuver to help stabilize trading in the 799 financial companies named in the ban. The SEC reasoned that short sellers where manipulating the stock prices of the named companies and that banning the practice of short selling would restore regularity to the markets (Goldman, 2008).
Saluzzi. "Introduction to Broken Markets: How High Frequency Trading and Predatory Practices on Wall Street Are Destroying Investor Confidence and Your Portfolio." Broken Markets: How High Frequency Trading and Predatory Practices on Wall Street Are Destroying Investor Confidence and Your Portfolio. N.p.: FT, 2012. N. pag. Financial Times Press. FT Press, 6 Aug. 2012. Web. 06 Feb. 2015.
The poetry of Emily Dickinson is shrouded in an air of mystery, and rightly so. The fact that not much is known about Dickinson’s personal life makes it somewhat difficult to grasp her strikingly complex subject matter and unusual writing style. Her rebellion of the traditional poetic form seems to have made it rather difficult to publish any of her work—Norton tells us that she did, in fact, try to have some of her poetry published, but that she was unhappy with how the editors tried to make the format of her work appear more conventional (“Emily Dickinson” 1661). When her poems finally were published following her death in 1886, it was through the tedious efforts of some of her closest friends. Initially, Dickinson’s poetry was disliked by critics who thought that her verse “violated the laws of meter” (“Emily Dickinson” 1662), but they began to gain popularity in the mid-1900s when Dickinson’s niece resumed publication of the poems. Without such efforts, Dickinson’s work may not have made it to the eyes and ears of audiences today. While her poems still cause some confusion among her readers, she is nonetheless revered as one of America’s greatest poets.
Wells, Ann Mary. “Early Criticism on Emily Dickinson.” On Dickinson. The Best from American Literature. Ed. Edwin H. Cady and Louis J. Budd. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990.