with rain, dew and earth still clinging to them” (Higginson 78). To others she was considered to be “intellectually blind, partially dead, and mostly dumb to the art of poetry” (Monro 81). It was best stated by Allen Tate when he wrote, “she can not reason at all; she can only see” (84).Although her poems were written with deep intensity, it seems that her favorite themes were thunderstorms, sunsets, and snow, and yet at the same time they were all somehow related to some angle of her house or garden (Whicher 87). There also remained a deep sense of mystery and a desire to know the why of things (Chelsea House of Library Criticism 2841).Harold Bloom said, “her best poetry is not concerned with the causes but with the qualities of pain” (19), which allows her to deal with the feelings “that the God of her fathers, when she most wished to lean on Him, was disconcertingly not there” (Whicher 87). Throughout her poetry there runs a current of sadness with just a touch of sparkling humor (Chelsea House of Library Criticism 2845) issuing her poems “a tension between the abstraction and sensation in which the two elements may be distinguished logically but not really” (Tate 84). Her symbol of nature was death, and her only weapon against death was her faith (Tate 84). She realizes that it is when a man’s faith runs dry that he must refresh his soul with the sanity, which lies only in nature (Whicher 87).“Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and grotesque fancy. Blake’s mysticism and Emerson’s mannerism held a very strong influence on her style” (Chelsea House of Library Criticism 2841). She wrote for no one except herself and often about death, burial and the unknown life beyond, leaving every ground open for legitimate study (Todd 78).Miss Dickinson lived much of her life alone and rarely even left her father’s house....
