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The Influences On Emily Dickinson's Poetry

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“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”-Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson was a poet in the mid to late 1800’s from Amherst, Massachusetts.Dickinson was born on December 10th, 1840 she later died in 1886. Dickinson studied for a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley. With the exception of that she rarely had visitors or left her home. She wrote over 1500 poems, most of which were not published until 4 years after her death, when her sister discovered her collection. Emily Dickinson suffered from bipolar depression this is proven by an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry by John F. McDermott, M.D. which states Emily Dickinson’s poems “suggest, as supported by family history, a bipolar pattern” (McDermott). Many of Dickinson’s poems were influenced by the people …show more content…

To go to Heaven you must die. When Dickinson says, “"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!” (Dickinson Heaven) she is saying she cannot reach it because she hasn’t died. She may be wishing she could or would die. Dickinson’s thoughts about dying and going to Heaven could be due to her bipolar depression. Dickinson also compares not being able to reach Heaven to not being able to reach an apple on line 2, “The Apple on the Tree—”(Dickinson Heaven). This demonstrates that she has tried to reach it possibly by killing herself.

In Dickinson’s poem “I'm Nobody! Who Are You?” she is writing about feeling like a nobody. Part of being depressed is feeling bad about yourself. She is trying to make herself feel better by saying in lines 2 and 3, “Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!” (Dickinson Nobody). As you can clearly see she is trying to make herself feel better by creating another person who feels the same way she does, like they are a nobody. Likewise she may feel like a nobody because she fell in love but then never got

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