Emily Dickinson Transcendentalism

Emily Dickinson is the definition of poetry. Within her poems lies numerous underlying meanings and symbols from her lifetime. When she was just a teenager she left school and became a recluse on her family’s homestead. Where she would begin to write some of the greatest poems in history. It is recorded that she wrote hundreds of little poems on random pieces of paper. Some of her greatest poems were about society during her time period, and they can even relate up to today’s society. Some of her best poems about society are “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” and “Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant”. Both of these poems contain a lot of similarities. However they differ slightly, in saying that, the other really compliments the other within their deeper meanings. Within each of these poems lies metaphors, personification, and inverted syntax.

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.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is one of the best poets in America. She is known for her uncommon way of writing poetry. There was a great deal of problems going on in her life. She spent mostly her entire life living in her home and only left unless she needed to do so. Unlike other poets, she did not have any order to her writings. She just wrote what she was feeling. Her work was anonymously published and later became known after her death.

”(Collins 45-47) are the names of Dickinson’s poems. Emily Dickinson was a poet who remained undiscovered for many years because she had buried her poetry not wanting anyone to know. Her poems express emotions very clearly as we know, Emily Dickinson remained stoic for most of her life. Dickinson’s poetry was her outlet to her emotions and questions, which seemed to be buried deep within her since she lived a very private life. She wrote in an ambiguous style where her words always held depth and another meaning.

        Dickinson also has a discrete style of writing poetry. She is very quiet and pacified when writing her poems.  She writes in quick little stanzas and brief thoughts.  A poem that pops up when talking about Emily Dickinson is “Success is counted sweetest.”  This poem tells about how success is so grand to those who have never experienced success.  She says that in order to achieve success you have you have the most extreme need for it.  In the poem, she talks about a soldier who is dying and how he was so close, but at the same time, so far away

Emily Dickinson did not live what seemed to be an adventurous or lively life. Many people thought of her as a recluse because she did not get out much. However, she wrote with so much knowledge of adventure and experience which not one person thought happened to her. She was able to come up with such vivid moments, ones where it were as if she dealt with them herself. This shows that either she had amazing and compelling ideas or that she did experience some of the things she wrote about, but was very quiet about it all. She did not write how other poets wrote. Many of her poems did not rhyme, but if they did, it was slant rhyme. She also had many reoccurring themes that she was very comfortable talking about. Knowing her background before reading the poems she wrote makes them

First, Emily Dickinson has always talked about souls and how important they are. In her poem, “The soul selects her own society” she says that if the soul wants to be by itself and pick if it wants to be around people it will and can. Although Emily talks about how bad society is, she still lived in it for a lot of years, That poem, “The soul selects her own society” is the best example of a transcendentalist. It

Emily Dickinson was one of the most ambiguous authors of her time. Her poetry remains a mystery to so many readers and her lack of biographical information makes her writing even more intriguing. Dickinson spent most of her life away from society, therefore, very few people knew how she viewed the aspects of life, let alone knew what her writing meant. Her interpretations of concepts such as religion, nature, and death are often seen as contradicting and pinning one specific thesis on her views is difficult because she viewed many things with complexity. Among her poems, readers see a diversity in her perspectives. For example, she might write one poem about the beauties of nature and continue to write another poem about the dangers or

"Emily Dickinson's stature as a writer soared from the first publication of her poems in their intended form. She is known for her poignant and compressed verse, which profoundly influenced the direction of 20th-century poetry. The strength of her literary voice, as well as her reclusive and eccentric life, contribute to the sense of Dickinson as an indelible American character who continues to be discussed today" (citation). The once misunderstood, shy, even crazy old lady nextdoor who never so much as stepped out from behind the doors of her modest home, cooped up in there all day doing Lord knows what has finally been brought under the light; now we know what a truly wonderful and gifted lady she

In the scholarship of nineteenth century American literature, the focal point is most often the rise of romanticism and transcendentalism. While both movements are well deserving of the scholarly attention they have received, one of their most definitive effects is often sidelined: the popularization of queer literature. The uncertainty and openness of nineteenth century literary movements allowed for LGBTQ+ themes to be entwined in various works with little to no suspicion or negative response from the general populace. One of the most recognizable representatives of the rise of queer American literature is Emily Dickinson, who has long been believed to be lesbian or bisexual. What little is known about her appears to support this conclusion; the poet was never married, and composed frequent amorous letters to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, her sister-in-law (Norton 1661). While the sexuality of Dickinson is indeterminate, her poems contain definitively queer content. An excellent example of this can be found in Poem 194, or “Title divine, is mine,” in which Emily Dickinson utilizes parallelistic imagery and tonal confusion to subtly portray feminine homoeroticism.

Emily Dickinson is an exceptional poet so much so that it is extremely difficult to place her in any single tradition she seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Her poetic form, with her customary four-line stanzas, ABCB rhyme schemes, and alternations in iambic meter between tetrameter and trimeter, is derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns, but Dickinson so thoroughly appropriates the forms interposing her own long, rhythmic dashes designed to interrupt the meter and indicate short pauses that the resemblance seems quite faint. Her subjects are often parts of the topography of her own psyche; she explores her own feelings with painstaking and often painful honesty but never loses sight of their universal poetic application;

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.

According to article Journal each her poet represents both the body or the spirit world which displays some types of suffering physical, emotional ,and mental that people might experience throughout their lives, secondly most of the Emily Dickinson poem focus on pain, despair, religion, happiness, and mainly death, which contrast because of her family closed relationship with the church, however few individuals question her frame of mind since most her poem focus on pain, despair, and life after

The controversy surrounding Emily Dickinson is her odd lifestyle and her tendencies to be somewhat of a recluse. She is sometimes considered abnormal because she does things differently from most others. She spends much of her life dressed in white and withdrawn from much of society. Of course, her peers take this negatively, but what they do not understand is that her being so private is more of a meditation to her, instead of a hiding. She just wants to escape the pressures she feels are normally required of women. She does not want to be a servant to sick and elderly. She feels she has more potential for her mind to grow, and those obligations would just be hindrances to her writing (McQuade 1255). Her childhood and her staying out of society as an adult, along with many other aspects known and not known, influence her poems and the style in which she goes about writing the works. Her techniques of writing are completely different from any other writer, whether prose or poetry. Dickinson composes her phrases by marking them off with a dash, placing a space before and after. This small maneuver places more emphasis on her “impress of the mind in its analysis of experience” (McQuade 1256). Her slant thymes and unique form of expression produces more of an oddness to the audience.