Emily Dickinson and Postmodernism
When thinking about the concept of postmodernism, one tends to immediately jump to the outlandish forms of art that have appeared over the past few decades under its guise. John Cage, for example, who excelled in composing in the postmodern genre, seemed to make a living off of stringing together various unexpected sounds and crafting music out of them. Andy Warhol, one of the most revered and iconic artists ever, postmodern or otherwise, created his art in ways that completely defied the imagination of the era he lived and worked in. This is, to say, that postmodernism has a very distinct aesthetic that comes to mind when the word is brought up. However, it’s not all flashy and wild; in fact, before the concept of modernism even came into being, Emily Dickinson’s poetry was using and addressing postmodern elements both accurately and effectively. While it doesn’t necessarily illustrate all the elements that are typically present within “postmodern work” as it’s come to mean today, her writing exhibits distinct and (for the time) groundbreaking examples of postmodernism through its complex syntactical structure and active resistance against period-typical rhythmic format.
It must be stated, first and foremost, that this essay’s goal is not to prove that Emily Dickinson’s work was postmodern and only postmodern.
Structurally, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is one of the most unique instances within American poetry as a whole. What’s fascinating is
When people think of Emily Dickinson, they think of a white dressed, ghostly woman hidden in the corridors of home, writing poem after poem. They do not think of the actual person Emily was. Emily Dickinson grew up in a rich, social, scholarly environment. She could have chosen many paths that would have led her to a completely different life, but because of circumstances, the social, high energy girl with a sense of humor became isolated by her own choice. Though Emily Dickinson’s depression is romanticized, sickness, social life, and death led her to seclusion and deep poems.
Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.
Emily Dickinson, recognized as one of the greatest American poets of the nineteenth century, was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts (Benfey, 1). Dickinson’s greatness and accomplishments were not always recognized. In her time, women were not recognized as serious writers and her talents were often ignored. Only seven of her 1800 poems were ever published. Dickinson’s life was relatively simple, but behind the scenes she worked as a creative and talented poet. Her work was influenced by poets of the seventeenth century in England, and by her puritan upbringing. Dickinson was an obsessively private writer. Dickinson withdrew herself from the social contract around the age of thirty and devoted herself, in secret, to writing.
Emily Dickinson, born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, is regarded as one of America’s best poets. After a poor experience at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she was regarded as a “no hope,” her writing career took off in full swing. Although her family was more conservative, regular churchgoers, and socially prominent town figures, Dickinson preferred a socially reserved lifestyle that renounced the traditional values of her day (Baym, 1189-93). The iconoclastic spirit pervasive in Emily Dickinson's poetry reflects her conflict with the traditions of New England society.
Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within
The Belle of Amherst, The Woman in White, or The Most Paradoxical of Poets…who can say which pseudonym is most becoming of the late great Emily Dickinson. By virtue of the multitudinous biographical literary works, moreover the wondrous intimacy of Dickinson’s poetry, one could surmise that as readers we comprehend her entirely: yet the most prevalent experience borne from reading Emily’s work, especially if her poems are read successively, is that we come away feeling as though we know nothing at all. Like no author before her and very few after her, Emily Dickinson divulges her hearts hidden secrets while recording what is inexorably one of the most conscientious explorations of the human consciousness ever attempted. Dickinson is known posthumously for her unusual use of form and syntax, but it was her pervasive themes of immortality, death, and madness in her poems that would canonize her as an indelible American character.
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.
To understand the extent that Dickinson’s modernist tendencies shine through in Adrienne Rich’s writings, it is important to first explore the impact Dickinson had on Rich’s life and compositions in general. It is no accident that Rich adapts styles and themes from Dickinson’s poetry; many parallels can be drawn between Dickinson’s and Rich’s life, including how “she [like Dickinson] set herself apart [from society’s framework] in order to define her own emotional and social territory” (Martin, 171). Also, both writers revered and feared their fathers, even though both chose to pit themselves “in opposition to [their fathers], to live according to [their] own premises” (Langdell, 166). Although Rich states that she could not have lived her life the way Emily Dickinson does in her essay “Vesuvius at Home: the Power of Emily Dickinson (1975),” she also admits that she has “come to understand her necessities [and] could have been a witness in her defense” (Rich, 158). Rich admires Dickinson, even calling some poems of her own mere “imitations”
Today, few would deny that Emily Dickinson is an important figure in American literature. The numerous ways to interpret her poetry draws more and more readers into her publications. It's as if everyone could interpret Dickinson's poems into his or her personal life; seeing the poems the way they want to see it. This is the effect "flexible" poems have on people.
Seventy-five years after the 1890s publication of the premier volumes of Emily Dickinson's poetry, critics still squabble about the poet's possibly lesbian relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Indeed, the specifics of Dickinson's relationship to Susan are ambiguous at best. All of the critical attention that her mysterious sexuality
The nineteenth century produced many esteemed authors, including Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman who became two of Americas most popular poets. While vastly different in style and personality, both Dickinson and Whitman relate to many people on an emotional level through their poetry, even in the twenty-first century. The works of poetry by Dickinson and Whitman can be compared on levels of style and form and both writers composed beautiful verses of high quality. Through the following comparisons, it will become apparent how Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman influenced American literature and culture both in similar and diverse ways.
Emily Dickinson is an American poet born in Amherst Massachusetts December tenth, 1830. As a child Dickinson’s love for books was massive yet she did not start writing poetry until she was eighteen. However, she was not known of until after her death. Nonetheless, some people other than her family did now about Dickinson’s remarkable poems. Furthermore, most tried encouraging her to publish her poems yet others did the contrary. Emily Dickinson’s life is what caused her to write such great poetry.
Emily Dickinson is described as “outspoken” , “defying the 19th century expectation that women were to be demure and obedient to men” , although this view is not clearly evidenced through her poetry.
Emily Dickinson was one of the many famous American poets whose work was published in the 19th century. Her writing style was seen as unconventional due to her use of “dashes and syntactical fragments”(81), which was later edited out by her original publishers. These fragmented statements and dashes were added to give emphasis to certain lines and subjects to get her point across. Even though Emily Dickinson was thought to be a recluse, she wrote descriptive, moving poems on death, religion, and love. Her poems continue to create gripping discussions among scholars on the meaning behind her poems.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most interesting female poets of the nineteenth century. Every author has unique characteristics about him/her that make one poet different from another, but what cause Emily Dickinson to be so unique are not only the words she writes, but how she writes them. Her style of writing is in a category of its own. To understand how and why she writes the way she does, her background has to be brought into perspective. Every poet has inspiration, negative or positive, that contributes not only to the content of the writing itself, but the actual form of writing the author uses to express his/her personal talents. Emily Dickinson is no different. Her childhood and adult experiences and culture form