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Emily Dickinson

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Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson's unusual character and style has made her become one of the world's most famous poets. Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10,1830 to a prominent family, her father Edward Dickinson was both a lawyer and the Treasurer of Amherst College. Emily"s mother was Emily Norcross Dickinson. Emily had one older brother, William Austin and a little sister, Lavinia. She was educated at the Amerherst Academy, the institute that her grandfather helped found. She also spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but had left because she did not like the religious environment. For a woman of this time, this much education was very rare. Emily Dickinson was a very mysterious person as she got older she became more and more reclusive too the point that by her thirties, she would not leave her house and would withdraw from visitors. Emily was known to give fruit and treats to children by lowering them out her window in a basket with a rope to avoid actually seeing them face to face. She developed a reputation as a myth, because she was almost never seen and when people did catch a glimpse of her she was always wearing white. Emily Dickinson never got married but is thought to have had a relationship with Reverend Charles Wadsworth who she met in the spring of 1854 in Philadelphia. He was a famous preacher and was married. Many scholars believe that he was the subject of her love poems. Emily probably only saw Wadsworth an additional three times after their first encounter which was only done by him going to Amherst, where she lived. In 1861 Wadsworth moved to San Francisco. It was after this time that Emily really started to produce hundreds of poems. Emily Dickinson submitted very few poems to publishers. She felt that her poetry was not good enough to be read by everyone. Emily Dickinson contributed a great deal to the world of literature, far beyond what her early editors considered unconventional lines. Walt Whitman, she helped to usher in a new age of poetry, with her revolutionary way with words. Her isolation, in that "room of her own" gave her more than just time to right and reflect. Dickinson had a unique perspective on life, death, love, nature, and friendship. She didn't need titles. Her lines spoke volumes. One of my favorite lines are from the poem “ I heard a buzz-fly.. Which interpreted Death “(the buzz being a symbol of death) ‘Because I could not stop for death‘... as the lines read.. “ As I could not stop for death… He kindly stopped for me”.
"Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality." (emabout#1) I feel like this poem itself spoke a whole lot about death and what Emily felt towards it. In my opinion I feel as if she was trying to say that since she wasn’t looking for it, it came to her and then she soon realized it was death looking in search of her. I honestly believe, in my opinion that Emily Dickinson wrote exactly what she felt in her heart. She chose to keep herself confined in a room and nowhere else. She may have chosen to do this because she was in a state of depression, uncertainty of her well being, or just wanted to keep to herself for her own reasons. Although, it may not ever be certain why she never allowed herself to be exposed to the out world. For the poems that she wrote about love they could have been what she hoped she could of had happen to her. In those poems she spoke of what she thought love was, who it was, and what it meant to her. In the poems she wrote of nature, she may have written while she was looking outside of her window looking at the seasons change from Fall, to Winter, to Spring, to Summer. Last, for the poems that she wrote of death, I also feel that they were of her beliefs of what her death would be like. In conclusion, Emily Dickinson is very complicated. She wrote poems while she was confined in a room that described what she thought love, nature, and death was or would be. Many people have been fascinated with her work and still are pronged into giving other inexperienced readers a persuasive aspect of how they should interpret what Emily Dickinson’s poems really mean.

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