Is it madness that drove Dickinson to write or insanity? My poem is about madness versus sanity, individuality, rebellion, and feminism. Joyce Hart says, "Many literary critics and literary historians believe thst Ralph Emerson influenced Dickinson" (Hart 92). Joyce Hart also says, "Dickinson's poem "Much Madness is Divinest Sense," has Emerson's writting in mind, influences the reader to interpret this poem in a way that might illustrate a rebillious young poet" (Hart 92). Dickinson;s poem is written in iambic meter. She has rhyming lines but most of her work is free verse, She uses a lot of alliteration in her porm "Much Madness is Divinest Sense." She uses personification to give objects characteristics. Dickinson also uses imagery so we can see things through her eyes.
"Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830. She died of Bright's disease on May 15, 1886 and was burried in Amherst. She never married or had any children. She detached herself from society and focused her life on her writting. As a child she was educated at home under her father's influence. He feared that some books will lead her away from thier family's religious beliefs. As she grew older she withdrew herself more from society. She wanted to stay commited to her art for the rest of her life. Dickinson attended two colleges Amherst Academy and Hadley Female Seminary. In school her accomplishments were somehat famous: she was intelligent, imagination, and her ability to write. She dazzled many of her teachers. Around 1862 it was believed that she wrote 366 poems. Most of her peoms reflected her personal self, her emotions, and her soul." (Galens 85,86).
Dickinson uses a lot of iambic meter, rhyming, metaphors, and free verse. ...
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...itics. Her style and her structure make you her peom her thoughts, the way she wants us to interpret and to see the poem through our eyes. Was she scared? Was she just lonely?
Works Cited
Chalton, Nichole. Literary Lifelines Volume 3. Connecticut: Grolier Educational, 1998. 86-87. Print.
Faulker, Howard. Critical Survey of Poetry. Pasadena: california, 2003. 1034-43. Print.
Galens, David, ed. Poetry for Students volume 16. Farmington Hills: Gale Group Company, 2002. 85-100. Print.
The Greebwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry. West Port: Greenwood press, 2006. 387-92. Print.
Blanchi, Martha D. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Keillor, Garrison. 435 Much Madness is Divinest Sense. N.p.: n.p., 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Galens, David. The. " Vol. 41" x.75" x.75" Poetry Criticism. Detroit: Gale, 2003, p691-696.
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
...us 75.1 (Jan. 1991): 150-159. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 58. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.
“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 ...
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.
Ferguson, Margaret W. , Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry. shorter fifth edition. New York, New York: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2005. print.
Emily Dickinson grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts in the nineteenth century. As a child she was brought up into the Puritan way of life. She was born on December 10, 1830 and died fifty-six years later. Emily lived isolated in the house she was born in; except for the short time she attended Amherst Academy and Holyoke Female Seminary. Emily Dickinson never married and lived on the reliance of her father. Dickinson was close to her sister Lavinia and her brother Austin her whole life. Most of her family were members of the church, but Emily never wished to become one. Her closest friend was her sister-in-law Susan. Susan was Emily's personal critic; as long as Emily was writing she asked Susan to look her poems over.
In conclusion, it can be stated the examples of Emily Dickinson's work discussed in this essay show the poetess to be highly skilled in the use of humor and irony. The use of these two tools in her poems is to stress a point or idea the poetess is trying to express, rather than being an end in themselves. These two tools allow her to present serious critiques of her society and the place she feels she has been allocated into by masking her concerns in a light-hearted, irreverent tone.
Dickinson, Emily. ?Because I could not stop for Death.? Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Kennedy, X.J., Dana Gioia. New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2005, 1103.
Ellmann, Richard and O'Clair, Robert, ed. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988.
This poem is very interesting in many aspects because it reminds me of a person that I use to know. In my life I have met people just like Emily Dickinson who were mentally depressed and very unsociable. In this poem it shows how unstable her mind was in words that she wrote in her poems. I do not want people to get me wrong she was a very smart woman it was said that she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, it also said that she was one of the best poets of all times. I do not understand were she went wrong because she lived a normal childhood in which she was very bright, witty, friendly to people, she had friends, and she went to parties. So where did she go wrong? By her early 30's she began to separate herself from everyone, even the people who she obviously loved had to speak with her from the other side of a closed door. In her life it was that she was in love with some man who died this maybe her for become very depressed. Emily Dickinson was very suicidal (meaning she tried to kill her many times, but was afraid of what it would be like).
Emily Dickinson wrote hundreds of short poems in her lifetime. Having read only a very small percentage of her work, it’s clear to me the recognized genius of this woman is well deserved, and that I have more to learn from her. Dickinson’s poetry touches of life, death, nature, religion, sexuality, identity, gender roles, and that’s just the surface.
Poets such as Elizabeth and Robert Browning, John Keats, William Wordsworth, and William Shakespeare all helped mold the style of Emily Dickinson’s poetry (“Emily Dickinson” 3). However, unlike these famous poets, Dickinson opted to write her own style of poetry and experimented with new ways to write poems. Unlike her predecessors and contemporaries, Dickinson did not write her poetry in iambic pentameter; instead, she modeled her poetical format under something known as hymn form. Hymn form, which is also known as common meter, was used in the majority of Emily Dickinson’s poems. She modeled her poetry after the New England Congregationalist hymnologist, Isaac Watts (Leiter 334). Dickinson’s application of hymn form is what makes her poetry so avant-garde, but scholars are confused as to why she used it in the first place. Linguistic scholar Cristanne Miller suggests that Watts may have attracted Dickinson with his frequent use of irregular rhymes and harsh-sounding phrases (Leiter 334). Some feminist scholars have claimed that Dickinson’s refusal to use iambic pentameter in her poetry suggests that she was “deliberately rejecting the established norms of patriarchal literature” (Leiter 334).
Emily Dickinson was an American poet, born in Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Emily later fell in love with a married preacher. He then, moved away with his family. It has been said that after that happened Emily became a recluse. Emily’s poems are unique because she uses unusual punctuation, for example she used dashes in place of commas. Although, her poems were very good she made her family promise her that they would burn them after she died. Emily died on May 15, 1886, her family then decided they would publish all of her poems. She wrote almost 1800 poems in total. Her poems often had themes of death and some of her poems were about love too.