Analysis Of Emily Dickinson 's Poetry

*Reminder: Avoid rephrasing the questions that prompt what you should be doing in that part, as this will usually lead to informal and non-objective writing.

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 was an American poetess during the 19th century, born in Amherst, Massachusetts, December 10, 1830. Dickinson died at the age of 56, on May 15, 1886. Although her family was prominent, she was most unsociable, being intensely solitary. People considered her as an eccentric, as she showed disinclination towards guests, which in some cases, even caused them to leave, leaving most of her acquaintanceships founded upon by correlation. Dickinson was known for her adherence for wearing white clothing, and her introverted personality. She remained unwedded for life, and rarely ever left her front gate of her homestead. Emily Dickinson started writing poetry in her youthful years, and was encouraged by Benjamin Franklin Newton to continue her writings. During her teenage years, she had uncovered poetic works through verses of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Wordsworth, she also deeply admired by John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her poetry was deeply affected by the Book of Revelation, and her Puritan background, that influenced her to explore concepts like love and death, and write in styles that made her be noticeable to the crowd. Critics believe that her biggest influence in poetry was Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she had met on her trip to Philadelphia, and fell in love with him. It is believed that her flow of verses came when Wadsworth left, which gave rise to heartsick poems, as she had considered him as her “closest

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean” (Socrates). What does it mean to be this type of poet? How can someone accomplish such success in poetry, the answer is just two words Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson spent a large portion of her life in isolation, not because she was forced to or because she was ill, Dickinson simply wanted to be alone and because of her isolation she became one of the greatest female poets of all time. Emily Dickinson set the bar high for other female poets and created some of the most renowned poems in the world. The two poems “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” and “Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant” are drastically different poems that tell two different stories, but there are some aspects that cause them to be similar: Imagery, tone, and the statement that the two poems make.

“Success is counted sweetest, by those who ne’er succeed.” -Emily Dickinson. When Dickinson speaks of the pain of failure and the satisfaction of victory, she speaks from experience. The hermit-like poet wrote nearly 2,000 poems by the time she died at 55. Emily Dickinson was a reserved poet and her work was largely unpopular during her life. She wrote under the topics of mortality and romance, however her works are always questioned of originality and for their vague nature.

Emily Dickinson’s poetry is hard to apprehend. She can express a variety of emotions and interpretations in just a few words. Even though she spent the last twenty years of her life isolated in her family’s house, she had a powerful imagination to write about love in ways that even her audience ever thought to express. In two of her poems, "This is my letter to the World” and "To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee," Dickinson expresses her sympathetic love for nature.

Two literary pieces, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by, Dylan Thomas and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Dickinson and Thomas have presented two different ideas on the topic and concept of death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.

There is a lot more to poetry than just the words themselves. “What William Shakespeare called, “the mind’s eye” also plays a role” (Borus34). What that means is that your experiences and thoughts will add to your understanding. Dickinson had an active mind and a style so unique and unusual with her writing. Something that was very unusual about her writing was that she never put a title to her poems. Just like many poets, she used a wide assortment of literary devices such as, metaphor, simile, alliteration, and symbolism. “Unlike many writers of her time, Dickinson did not use conventional rhyme, capitalization, or punctuation” (Borus36). For example, she would put dashes not just at the end of a line, but also

“To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable”— John

     After evaluating my perception of The Last Night that She Lived, by Emily Dickinson. The message in this poem is we take life for granted and we don’t appreciate it until we are threatened with losing it. Emily used what seems to me as free verse with no apparent rhyme but alliteration at times. This is a Narrative poem that tells a story about a death of a young woman.

     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.

Emily Dickinson understood that a poem could not just succeed in content or form alone. If the content is rich and full of information but its form is lacking, it could not convey its message properly. On the other hand, if the form is perfect but the content is lacking, it wouldn’t have a message to convey at all. There needs to be a delicate balance between the two and Dickinson achieves this balance. There is always a contextual reason for her form and it aids in the effectiveness of her poems. One such example is how her poems do not have a title because she never intended for anyone to read them and, therefore, were an honest reflection of her thoughts. However, because her poems never really clarified any themes or messages, there is

This Dickinson poem is one that is indicative of sexual desire and passion. In the beginning of the poem, there is imagery of an experience between two lovers. The second and third stanzas are vaguer forming a metaphor of the experience with nautical language. Since Emily Dickinson was experienced at describing various events through one’s life in various, creative ways, this is nothing new with her poetry. Each stanza is a quatrain with just four short lines.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, into an influential family in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father helped found Amherst College, where Emily later attended between 1840 and 1846. She never married and died in the house where she was born on May 15, 1886.

Open Mike Nights take place every Tuesday at six in the evening in Florida Discount Music. The bitter smell of coffee permeates the humid air and the clink of mugs and ceramic plates often accompany the snapping of fingers after a person finishes performing their piece of poetry. However once the next person begins, the place becomes as loud as a morgue at midnight with people anticipating the next reading. Some poems receive better responses than others, confirmed by the louder or more frequent snaps, but nonetheless, the authors continue to present their work to the audience every week. So, what would happen if a poem from a different time period shared his or her poetic genius to a modern group of people? Depending on the century, the