The Influence of Personal Experiences In Emily Dickinson's Poetry
None of Emily Dickinson's readers has met the woman who lived and died in Amherst, Massachusetts more than a century ago, yet most of those same readers feel as if they know her closely. Her reclusive life made understanding her quite difficult. However, taking a close look at her verses, one can learn a great deal about this remarkable woman. The poetry of Emily Dickinson delves deep into her mind, exposing her personal experiences and their influence on her thoughts about religion, love, and death. By examining her life some, and reading her poetry in a certain light, one can see an obvious autobiographical
connection.
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No quandary in life presented Emily Dickinson with such wrenching choices as the demand for conversion. Her doubts tempted her to rebel against
God, but her needs drove her toward faith in Him. Neither stance could overcome the other, and neither could be reconciled. Emotionally, she lacked a direction of beliefs, however there was one thing she was sure of - God existed. “Reason convinced her that there must be such a Being as God; and as to God's existence she seems never to have wavered” (Wolff 84). Believing that He was there only gave her something solid to forsake. In a letter to her friend once she wrote, “
...and I am standing alone in rebellion, and growing very careless...” (Sewall
375). However, it was only when she had achieved complete poetic independence that she could confidently write in open defiance of God:
I reckon - when I count at all -
First - Poets - Then the Sun
Then Summer - Then the Heaven of God -
And then - the List is done -
But, looking back - the First so seems
could no longer go on. She believed in her faith and religion more than anything and
One of the prevalent themes of Emily’s work is death. Since she wrote about her inner world and troubles, death as a theme could not be avoided. Emily Dickinson had to face the losing friends to death. Several deaths of family members, including her mother, father and a nephew helped contribute to the theme in her poetry. These events affected her health but she found a way to cope with the idea of death with her poetry. She developed an attitude towards death, seeing it as a transition from mortality to immortality. She accepted its inevitability and tried to make peace with the idea itself. This kind of comprehension was something Emily needed in order to cope with the loss of her loved ones who had been her only support and company in her isolated lifestyle. The theme of death is shown in the poem I picked for the research paper. In the poem called “How Far Is It To Heaven”, by Emily Dickinson it again deals with death but heaven and hell is included. This poem has only a few lines but it gets straight to the point and the theme of the poem hits you right in the face. One example is clear from the first two lines where it asks “How Far Is It To Heaven?” (Line 1) and “As far as Death this way” (Line 2). The poem is so simple but portrays a powerful message to the reader. Another huge theme of
Soon after being held in captivity, Mary Rowlandson’s attitude started changing from hopeless to hopeful; “Oh, I may see the wonderful power of God, that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction: still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning” (Rowlandson 131). Here Rowlandson is talking about how she is able to keep her spirit up even though her daughter is extremely sick and she has no friends to comfort her. She claims she is able to do this because of the great power of God. It seems like her mind is being uplifted by the thought of God, and she is able to focus on the good things she still has in life. I believe without her religious beliefs keeping her mentally healthy throughout all of her hardships, she would have never been able to handle her captivity as well as she did. Even after her daughter died, she is still able to keep herself together; “I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life” (Rowlandson 132). She recognizes looking back that she could have easily decided to take her own life after losing her daughter at such a young and helpless age. It is God who protected her and kept her from doing anything bad to herself at such a low point
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.
member to her family. That tragedy struck in her life. She decided to step back from the Lady
While growing up with her father, her religion was forced upon her, as for their punishment the children were sentenced to “the verse”, in which they were required to right out one hundred lines direct from the bible by memory. She doesn’t seem to enjoy the idea of faith, but there is no doubt that she realizes it’s
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
She has been blessed to teach and mentor 7th grade girls, write various Bible Studies for the middle school student ministry at her home church, speak to women’s groups of various ages, plan and help lead women’s retreats, and write women’s Bible Studies. Over the past several years Jenifer has been heavily involved in women’s ministry.
forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to
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 is most of the the most famous poets that has ever lived, next to Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. Although, what is interesting to find out if that she only published one poem anonymously before she died, and never saw any success in her lifetime but still made a huge impact on american poetry..
Early in the story, there is evidence of the power of believing. For example, when Teresa came home from school one day, she said '".. I want to grow an orange tree."' Then, her mother frowned and said that she couldn't. Teresa told her mom that she was going to grow an orange tree no matter what she said. Her mother claims that she can't grow an orange tree because it is too cold. Teresa still disagrees. Then Teresas mother suggested that she grow some flowers in the spring. Once again, Teresa dissagrees. She only wants to grow an orange tree. Teresa won't settle for anything but an orange tree. This shows that Teresa belives that she can grow an orange tree if she tries, and belives she can even when she is told she can't.
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.
In today’s society, people are told to follow the trends and to not stray too far away from society, however, Judy Garland, famous actor and singer, once said, “Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.” Judy Garland’s view of people, society and herself are similar to the poems “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” by Emily Dickinson and “In Paths Untrodden” by Walt Whitman in that people should focus more on being individual than following what society tells them. These poems, along with research about the authors of these poems, individuality, and the analysis of Steve Dininno’s painting, Businessman walking away from crowd conclude that people should be more individual and take their own paths
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