Emily Dickinson

The Belle of Amherst

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
 Biography

Born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, MA.

Educated at Amherst Academy.
At 17, began college at Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary; she became ill the spring of her first
year and did not return.
She would leave home only for short trips for the
remainder of her life, leading scholars to speculate
she may have been agoraphobic.
Dickinson in Love?

The Master Letters

– Unknown man
Samuel Bowles
– Dickinson’s editor
Susan Gilbert
– Dickinson’s sister-in-
law
 Was She Weird?

Known for being a recluse, she didn’t leave

her family’s homestead for any reason after
the late 1860’s.
She almost always wore white.
She often lowered snacks and treats in
baskets to neighborhood children from her
window, careful never to let them see her
face.
 Dickinson’s Poetry

Regular meter—hymn meter and ballad

meter, also known as Common meter
– Quatrains
– Alternating tetrameter and trimeter
– Often 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, 2nd and 4th lines
rhyme in iambic pentameter
The use of dashes
Influenced by nature and spiritual themes
Dickinson’s Publishing Career

Sent poems to Thomas Wentworth

Higginson, a literary critic and family
friend.
He recognized her talent, but tried to
“improve” them, which made Dickinson
lose interest.
At the time of her death, only seven of her
poems had been published.
 Posthumous Publication

After her death, her poems were heavily

edited and published by Higginson and
friend Mabel Loomis Todd.
Thomas Johnson produced a collection of
Dickinson’s more than 1700 poems in three
volumes in 1955; he restored her original
capitalization and punctuation.
 What’s the Difference?
Because I could not stop for Death,
BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children
We passed the school where children played,
strove
Their lessons scarcely done;
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We passed the setting sun.

An excerpt of poem 712, or “Because I could not stop for Death, called
“The Chariot” by Higginson and Todd. On the left is the edited version; on the right,
the original. Note the major changes in lines 9 and 10.
 Dickinson’s Legacy

Dickinson died May 15, 1886 of nephritis

(kidney disease).
Dickinson is considered influential to poets
such as Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur,
Archibald MacLeish, and William Stafford.
Along with Walt Whitman, Dickinson is
one of the two giants of American poetry of
the 19th century.