Emily Dickinson's Poetry Essay

The poetry of Emily Dickinson is one of the most recognizable of the 19th century. Dickinson’s poetry stands out because of its unconventional use of capitalization and punctuation. Her poems contain capitalized words which are not normally capitalized. Her poems are noted for the frequent use of the dash. Literary scholars have attempted to interpret Dickinson’s unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Some believe that it was merely part of Dickinson’s penmanship (Weisbuch 73). They therefore edit Dickinson’s poetry and publish them in standardized form. Others believe that the capitalization and punctuation were a conscious effort on Dickinson’s part. These scholars notice the little nuances of Dickinson’s dashes, such as whether

A famous poet named Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830. She was well known for writing in quatrains and using slant rhyme in her poetry. Figurative language played a huge role in emphasizing the meaning of her poems, she also used dashes to highlight words. The poem “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died” mainly described her deathbed scene. She used imagery to describe how the room looked and how inaudible the room she occupied was, because she could hear a fly.

The tone seems reflective, as if the narrator is retelling the story over, having thought about it many times. There is one point when irony is used—the last stanza is full of confusing words that contradict each other and are certainly not what one would expect after reading the preceding line. I feel the rhetorical situation is the narrator telling a story, perhaps something that happened long ago, and reflecting on it. Dickinson’s use of dashes—though she uses them frequently in all poems—assists to the feeling of story-telling. There are a few occasions throughout the poem when the use of dashes gives the idea of the narrator pausing and adding in a little extra information, maybe something that helps the reader understand the situation more. I think the reader is having a one-on-one meeting with the narrator, though the reader is never formally or specifically addressed. I think it could be that the narrator has gone off on a bit of a tangent, and is perhaps talking almost to his or herself, and glances back to the reader every once in a while to make sure he or she is still paying attention.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most influential poets of all time, and has a unique way of using literal imagery to paint a picture in the readers mind. The best poets are those that excel at using their words to create clear, concrete images and intrigue their reader. Dickinson began writing poetry around the year 1855, and prospered for another 10 years. Some of her most famous poems include “I Taste a liquor Never Brewed”, “Success is Counted Sweetest”, and “Wild nights – Wild Nights!”, all of which have influenced many aspiring writers to become poets, and show her true colors as a poet. Among her works of poetry, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, is one that resembles the frequent patterns of Dickinson’s style of

Dickinson writes her poetry in this way in order to give her poems a Biblical sense to the reader. Her poems seem Biblical to the reader because they are written in short lines with small stanzas just as church hymns

Emily Dickinson, a more calm writer, wrote about what she knew and what intrigued her. She used imagery from nature, religion, love, reality, and death in each of her poems. Using pathos, she writes her poems with strong satire which

Although many of Emily Dickinson’s poems are short they carry many meaningful and sayings and ideas. The unique style of her poems has caused many to ponder at her works, but is nevertheless monumental. The length and the dashes used by Dickinson is what makes her poems so interesting an inspiring to read. In the poem “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church”, Dickinson uses dashes to emphasize her points.

Dickinson’s poem " I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", is a prime example of complicity embodied by simple style and language. In this piece, Dickinson chronicles psychic fall. The use of many different devices such as sound, repetition, and metaphors, all help to develop the theme of the poem.

Along with the irregularities in meter, neither poem has a regular line length or rhyming pattern. Dickinson’s poem contains alternating tetrameters and trimeters, with the exception of the first line, which contains 7 syllables. The poem contains some irregular rhyme; ‘heard’ in line 5 rhymes with ‘bird’ in line 7, and ‘Sea’ in line 10 rhymes with ‘Me’ in line 12. Whitman’s poem contains even more irregular line lengths. The first 4 lines of each stanza vary from 12 to 15 syllables, but the last 4 lines of each stanza vary from 5 to 8 syllables. Unlike in Dickinson’s poem, the rhyming scheme carries throughout the whole poem, although the AABBCDED rhyme pattern contains a few cases of near rhyme.

This poem conjures images of a solemn ceremony in which the soul reigns superior by shutting out everyone, including the emperor, similar to the shutting out of everyone that Dickinson did. In one of Dickinson’s most famous poems, “I heard a Fly buzz,” the theme of death is presented as well as a symptomatic characteristic of bi-polar disorder. The poem itself epitomizes her preoccupation with death and the macabre and also shows how the small, normally ignorable sound of a fly buzzing becomes the only thing heard, she magnifies this sound in a situation when it seems that everything else is much more important, but this inability to drown out extraneous noises is typical of someone suffering from manic-depression. The form of this poem employs all of Dickinson’s formal patterns: trimeter and tetrameter iambic lines, her specific use of the dash to interrupt the meter of the poem, and it is in ABCB rhyme scheme.

First, she uses dashes that separate the lines in the poem. The dashes are there to cause readers to pause and slowly read the poem. The next method that is used is the rhyme scheme, which is an ABCB pattern. The rhyme scheme is very important in the fact that it still slows the reading of the poem down, while still flowing smoothly. Also, Dickinson uses strange capitalization throughout the poem. The capitalization is purposely in specific words to make readers stop and think about why the words are capitalized, making the readers slow down while

Dickinson’s poems are easily recognized by her usage of dashes, random capitalization, and no titles. Dickinson frequently uses dashes for a more dramatic tone and adding more power behind her words. For example, in the poem “Death sets a Thing significant,” Dickinson writers, “The stitches stopped -- by themselves –” (XX). In this sentence, the dashes between the words “by themselves” it forces the reader to pause and add a more dramatic tone. It also shows that she tries to add emphasis that nothing influenced the stitches stop it just stopped by itself. In most of her poems she places dashes at the end instead of common punctuation marks in most poet’s poems during her time. For instance, in the poem “ I gave myself to him” the line “ Depreciate the Vision-/ Till the Merchant buys-” demonstrates her usage of dashes to replace the common punctuations ( stanza 3, line 1-2). In addition, she would capitalize words that shouldn’t be capitalized. For instance, in the poem “ I gave myself to him” she wrote “ And took Himself, for Pay,” (Stanza 1,line 2). In this line, the capitalization of himself emphasizes that he didn’t give anything up for this marriage and that she gave up everything in her life. It also emphasizes the inequality in her marriage and society’s view of roles for females as submissive. As a matter of fact, this is also shown in the line “ She rose to His Requirement” from the poem “She Rose to His Requirement- dropt” ( stanza 1, line 1). As in this sentence by capitalizing His she made it seem like he was a higher status than her. During that time, Mount Holyoke Female semistery college adapted these techniques and it led to many believing that she adapted these trademarks because she wanted wanted to gain admission. ( “Major”) Also, Emily Dickinson never title any of her poems. Due to the fact that she never had any intention of publishing her work while she was alive, her work was only published after her death by her family (“Emily”). Dickinson’s poems are mostly filled with metaphors, imagery Almost all of her poems are lyrical which express thoughts and feelings and written in first person point of view ( “Major”). She chose to wrote her poem in a lyrical form and a first person view

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense

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