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Back to Subjects - Poetry

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in the community of Amherst, Massachusetts. She was the second daughter of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Emily, her brother Austin, and her sister Lavinia were brought up and nurtured in a quiet reserved household headed by their father Edward. Throughout her life, her mother was not always around, or "accessible," a fact that is said to have caused Emily’s eccentricity. They were raised in Puritanical Massachusetts, where they were expected to take on their fathers beliefs and values. Because Emily was the daughter of a prominent politician, she was able to get a good education at the Amherst Academy. After her time at the academy, she went to South Hadley Female Seminary where she started to become a young lady. Although she was indeed successful at college, Emily returned after only one year at the seminary to begin her life of seclusion. Although she never married, she had several significant relationships with a select few people. It was during the period after her return from school she began to dress in all white and chose few people that she would let into her own precious society. Emily refused to see almost everyone that came to visit her. She seldomly left her fathers house. In her entire life she took one trip to Philadelphia, Washington, and a few trips to Boston. Other than those trips, she did not leave her hometown. During this time which was her early twenties, Emily began to write poetry. Luckily for her, during those few journeys she met two men that would help her be of source of inspiration later on...Charles Wadsworth, and Thomas Higginson. Charles Wadsworth (age 41) had a positive effect on the life of Emily. She met Charles on her trip to Philadelphia. He was a clergyman and Emily looked to him with respect. He was similar to Emily in that he was a romantic person who sought solidarity too. It is said that although he was married, Emily had a love for him, and he may be the subject of some of her love poems. When Emily had enough poems, she went to find someone who could help her and give her advice about anonymous publication. On April 15, 1862 she found Higginson. She wrote letters to him asking for advice. He was against publishing her poetry, however he did realize that Emily was talented and gifted. After the letter in 1862, Emily decided against publishing her poems, and that was why only seven of her poems were published in her lifetime. The later part of her life was spent in mourning because of several deaths in a few years time. Emily’s father died in 1874, both her mother and Wadsworth in 1882, and her nephew in 1883. Over those years due to the amounts of deaths she encountered, the theme of death became more prevalent in Emily’s poems. Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1886. As a result of her life of solitude, it is said by some that she is able to focus more on the world around her. Many of her poems were not complicated and were written on scraps of paper, such as grocery lists, and when she died and her works were published Editors began to arrange her works into categories, such as friends, nature, love, and DEATH. In 1955, Thomas Johnson published Emily Dickinson’s works in their original format. In order to get a clear understanding of Emily and her works, I think it is necessary to look at one of her poems that does indeed deal with death. the carriage held but just ourselves We passed the school where children played, we passed the fields of gazing grain, We paused before a house that seemed In this poem it is clear to us Emily’s feelings on death. This poem is about a lifelong journey that the dying person embarks upon. The first stanza begins by saying that a person cannot stop living and wait for death; however death will eventually come upon us. It will come no matter what and we cannot stop living and wait for it to arrive. The second stanza says that she went on this journey with death. They drove around together and they looked on the events of her life and what she has done with it and where she has gone. Next they visited the school house, possibly where Emily attended and looked at the school yard where the children played at recess. They passed the fields of gazing grain and watched the sun set down. Here Emily is going through times in her life, and things she has done. She is showing us that death is upon everyone and it is not as scary as one would think. The next stanza speaks of a chill she felt when she thought of death. She like everyone, felt a chill when she thought too much about dying and death; however she knows that it is not a bad thing. Next Emily thought of the house she had seen. Perhaps the house is a grave with a tomb stone , and Emily is standing upon it. She gives a clear description of the house (grave) and tells us just how she saw it. The final stanza Emily shows us the time frame she speaks of. It feels like forever since that house was as young as she was. However, she concludes that when death is eminent it is when we finally reach eternity. The poem is just one example of the fact that Emily Dickinson’s works focused on themes of death and her experience with it. Obviously many of the works of Emily Dickinson can be traced to deaths that she encountered in life. These had to be a major reason for her writings to have concerned death so much. However, it is also apparent to me, that her religious beliefs and ideals set by her father had a major impact on her writings as well. Another important poet during this time period was that of T.S. Eliot. In looking at his writing style it will help to see the major influences of writing at this time. T.S. Eliot, was an American-born English poet, literary critic, dramatist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, who is best known for his poem The Waste Land, one of the most widely discussed literary works of the early 20th century. His plays, which rely on a colloquial use of unrhymed verse, attempted to revive poetic drama for the contemporary audience. Eliot's methods of literary analysis have been a major influence on English and American critical writing. Eliot was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, into a distinguished New England family, the son of a businessman and a poet. He was educated at Harvard University, the Sorbing, and the University of Oxford. He became a resident of London in 1915 and a naturalized British citizen in 1927. Between 1915 and 1919 Eliot held various positions, including those of teacher, bank clerk, and assistant editor of the literary magazine Egoist. Eliot's first important poem was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). In his first volume of verse, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), he uses the imagery of urban life in a context of poetic intensity. The poems have no fixed verse form or regular pattern, and rhyme is used only occasionally. During the 1920s Eliot developed pronounced views on literary, religious, and social subjects. His long poem in five parts, The Waste Land (1922), is an erudite work that expresses vividly his conception of the sterility of modern society in contrast with societies of the past. In essays on such subjects as the Elizabethan dramatists, the English metaphysical poets, and Italian poet Dante, Eliot profoundly influenced the tenets of literary criticism. He contended, in the collection of The Sacred Wood (1920), that the critic must develop a strong historical sense in order to judge literature from a proper perspective, and that the poet must be impersonal in the creative exercise of the craft. As founder and editor of The Criterion from 1922 to 1939, he provided a literary forum for many prominent contemporary writers. In the collection of essays For Lancelot Andrewes (1928), he describes his position as that of a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion. Beginning in the 1930s the qualities of serenity and religious humility became paramount in Eliot's poetry, notably in Ash Wednesday (1930), The Rock (1934), and his long verse play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), based on the 12th-century martyrdom of Saint Thomas à Becket. Four Quartets (1943), considered by many critics his finest work, expresses in moving verse a transcendental sense of time. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Eliot's fame as a playwright dates from the successful production of The Cocktail Party (1949), which explored the theme of salvation in a context of modern drawing-room comedy. Other dramatic presentations of religious and moral themes are The Confidential Clerk (1954) and The Elder Statesman (1958). Among his other works are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) a book of verse for children, which was adapted for the musical theater stage and began running in 1981; the plays Sweeney Agonistes (1932) and The Family Reunion (1939); and the prose works The Idea of a Christian Society (1940) and Notes Toward a Definition of Culture (1948). In looking at the works of Emily Dickinson as well as T.S. Eliot it is clear to see that many factors influence the style and focus of an authors works. Religion seems to have played a major part in the writings of poets at this time. It is clear that family, religion, and personal experience help shape the poetry of many authors. Bibliography:

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