Poems by Emily Dickinson

Poems by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American poet. She was born in Amherst and throughout her adult life she rarely travelled very far from home. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence. She was a prolific private poet, choosing to publish fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems. Her poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Her poems also tend to deal with themes of death and immortality, two subjects which infused her letters to friends. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when Poems by Emily Dickinson was published by Thomas H. Johnson.

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830, Dickinson began life as an energetic, outgoing young woman who excelled as a student. However, in her mid-twenties she began to grow reclusive, and eventually she rarely descended from her room in her father's house. She spent most of her time working on her poetry, largely without encouragement or real interest from her family and peers, and died at age fifty-five. Only a handful of her 1,775 poems had been published during her lifetime. When her poems finally appeared after her death, readers immediately recognized an artist whose immense depth and stylistic complexities would one day make her the most widely recognized female poet to write in the English language. Dickinson's poetry is remarkable for its tightly controlled emotional and intellectual energy. The longest poem covers less than two pages. Yet in theme and tone her writing reaches for the sublime as it charts the landscape of the human soul. A true innovator, Dickinson experimented freely with conventional rhythm and meter, and often used dashes, off rhymes, and unusual metaphors--techniques that strongly influenced modern poetry. Dickinson's idiosyncratic style, along with her deep resonance of thought and her observations about life and death, love and nature, and solitude and society, have firmly established her as one of America's true poetic geniuses.

Rachel Wetzsteon is Assistant Professor of English at William Paterson University. She has published two books of poems, The Other Stars and Home and Away.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781843911210
ISBN 10	1843911213
Title	Poems
Author	Emily Dickinson
Series	Hesperus Classics Poetry
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Hesperus Press Ltd
Year published	2005-07-01
Number of pages	128
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable