Essays on Emily Dickinson

Intro

Emily Dickinson is an American poet, who is probably the most recognizable name in American poetry. Not much is known of her motivation regarding her poems as only 12 of the 1800 she had written were published during her life time and she left little in the way of explaining her thoughts regarding what she had written. What is known is that she did not think the majority of her poems were worth public consumption and had told her sister Lavinia (Vinnie) to dispose of them after her death. This was probably due to her poems being heavily altered ...

Every poet has its own main theme that he or she carries along their whole literary life. Some of them focus on positive aspects of our life, such as love, family, friendships etc. However, there are those who see this world in not so bright colors. For example, such poets talk about grief, sorrow, loss etc. Emily Dickinson is one of such poets. She was a lady who focused on the negativity and quite upsetting things that happen in our life. The metaphor of death is common for both of her poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” ...

I believe that the enjoyment that comes to poetry is not dependent on the poem, but on the poet who presents it. Many people who have been to a poetry class or a spoken word concert are likely to agree with me. Poetry, according to Emily Dickinson, a well-known poet, brings people's thoughts and emotions into being. It resonates with those emotions so deep that they cannot be uttered in the absence of poetry. My love for poetry has been a lifelong experience. I grew up in a family where intellectual growth was more important that our own physical ...

Three poems, which have been chosen for this paper: “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg, and “Sailing to Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats, are all very different and belong to different literary trends. However, they all are focused on the subject of death, which they depict from different standpoints, systems of beliefs, and values. In the first poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson describes death using the image of a gentleman, who takes her into his carriage: “He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage” ( ...

The poem basically talks about Emily Dickinson’s inner feelings. From the way the poem is structured and the way she articulates her wordings, it directly points out towards her inner feelings. However, it’s not just inner feelings in the ordinary sense, the poem greatly relates to her inner struggles. Throughout the poem, Dickinson significantly speaks of her struggles, as a result, she questions God several times. However, she primarily relies on faith at all times more so in the suffering that she endures (Dickinson 16). Moreover, she also touches on the theme of her confusion in respect ...

Sexuality and gender have no place in the modern world, but while reading the work of Diane Seuss and Emily Dickinson, it is clear sexuality and gender are a part of every aspect of life, similar to a universal truth that has no chance of changing any time soon. Poetry has the ability to tell a story through multiple verses, lines, or stanzas. This paper will focus on the works of Seuss and Dickinson, while discussing the formal elements of both poems. The first poem described is “Still Life with Self-Portrait” by Diane Seuss discusses the painting by Cornelius ...

Emily Dickinson is one of America’s most beloved poets. She wrote of nature, love, and death. It is said that Dickinson wrote 1800 poems, the majority of which were untitled. Dickinson was known to be somewhat reclusive and introverted throughout her life. These traits, however, did not preclude her from observing and appreciating even the simplest forms of her natural surroundings. One of Dickinson’s poems involving nature is “A Bird Came Down the Walk-.” It is this poem that will be discussed here. Dickinson’s poetry is of a personal quality, not only to the poet, but ...

It has been well documented that Emily Dickinson wrote poetry for herself and her friends, not for publication. Her expression, found in her poetry, is an expression of self, often conflated as thoughts entered her mind from multiple directions creating mature works that bent and formed new visions different and fuller than that original image at the beginning of each poem. Emily Dickinson’s reclusive nature is revealed in much of her poetry. It is in those written lines where she explores her world. Her work, relegated to letters to her friends, was from her soul and not meant ...

The social development of the current world has been influenced by the religious manifestations since the oldest times. Past and current religions have shaped societies as they are nowadays known, with religion playing a major role in establishing people’s morals, attitudes and believes about life. As religion has played such a major role in humans’ lives since it can be traced, it is no wonder that it has received considerable attention in literature. Three such literary pieces that explore the nature and the effects of religion on society are Emily Dickinson’s “She Rose to His Requirements”, Mohsin ...

There can be no denial of the fact that Emily Dickinson is one of the most celebrated poets in the history of English literature. The poet goes on to exude her literary quintessence and aesthetic charm in the poems that have found a special place in the hearts of the avid readers of poetry. A close introspection of the works by Emily Dickinson would enable one to have a much better comprehension of the intricacies of the literary portrayals. One can take into reckoning the poems, After great pain, a formal feeling comes and I dwell in Possibility, penned ...

The two poems under consideration in this essay are “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” by Edward Eslin Cummings and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson. Both poems are well-known works by equally well-known poets and both dwell on such philosophical issues as life and death, their quality and meaning. Cummings’s poem is more about life and its passage than about death. In that typical manner of his based on the play of words and syntactical structures, Cummings conveys an idea of transience of life. In addition, he points out that often people ...

Emily Dickinson is an original poet as she used her pen to challenge the existing conventions of poetry. Throughout her poems, Emily clearly experimented with a style of expression that moved away from the traditional styles of poetry and took on a unique style that made her speakers sharp-sighted observers who face the challenges of no escape from their societies. Additionally, Dickenson used her poems as a sword that would serve to liberate the speakers from the inescapable boundaries of the society. Clearly, Dickenson wrote poems that broke away from the traditional rules of poetry which challenged the narrow-minded ...

The simple fact that so many women have used male pseudonyms to find a publisher shows the differences that gender forces on writers. Mary Ann Evans chose to write under the name of George Eliot, and Louisa May Alcott wrote as A.M. Barnard, at least when she was writing her dark short stories. Lest you think that this is an eccentric oddity of the 19th century, it is instructive to remember that a publisher told Joanne Rowling that boys would enjoy reading about Harry Potter more if she published it as a more masculine J.K. While both women and men appear comfortable ...

A comparison of the poems “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” by Emily Dickinson and “The Slave’s Curse” by John Whitman

Emily Dickinson and John Whitman are two prominent figures in American literature. Both poets are considered innovators of poetry as their ways of writing, although different from one another in various aspects, inspired people to write by following their own style and unique way of expressing themselves. Also, their forms of writing showed a departure from the British model which was traditionally used by most poets of the 19th century and gave birth to what is ...

The poem that I chose to examine for this poetry analysis is, There’s No Frigate like a Book, by the great poet Emily Dickinson. As an individual who is incredibly passionate about books, with a love of reading from a young age, the title of the poem was enough to draw me in as my pick for this assignment. Additionally, the excellent works of Emily Dickinson have rarely disappointed me. These two reasons were behind my decision to pick the poem for this analysis.

Dickinson’s poem has a unique theme that is centered around the experience of one who reads books ...

One of the most well-known poets of the 19th century was Emily Dickinson. Not only were her poems considered valuable pieces of literature, she also helped advance the place of female writers. Traditionally, females were considered the inspiration for literature instead of the creators. Dickinson was one of the female poets who helped to change that mindset and pave the way for other female poets to follow in her footsteps. Three common themes in Dickinson’s poems are first person narrative, nature imagery, and death. These common themes are showcased within three of her poems: “I Started Early-Took my ...

The Soul Selects her Society

The poem “the soul selects her society” by Emily Dickinson is centered on the personal preferences of a person. It also tries to portray the feelings of superiority that a person harbors whenever in a scenario that requires her/his choice. It essentially tries to show how the self despite attractive surrounding conditions only influences decisions. First, she uses words that signify power. These words include “emperor,” “chariots” and divine. The author uses these words to bring out the authority the persona has in the poem. The persona is unmoved by all these features which show that the actual power of the ...

While Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost were writing poems at the same time period of American poetry, they represent very different styles, sometimes write about different subjects, but also sometimes explore the very same questions with their poetry. Most notable, both poets consider the passage of time, aging and death as themes worthy of being explored in verse. One of the most notable differences between the poetry of Frost and the poetry of Dickinson is the length that both poets use to convey their themes and message. With some exceptions, Frost tends towards mid-size poems of 4-6 stanzas ...

The word “Sorrow” is often confined by definition to a feeling of intense emotion that can come as a result of many different circumstances. In individual feels sorrow, or feels sorry for something they have done, something that has happened, or someone they know, and that is where the definition ends. However, there are many ways that sorrow can be defined. It is true that the word should be defined by its feeling, but it should also be defined based on an individual’s actions and the way they live their lives. Sorrow can also be defined by the state of ...

M. Shelly "Frankenstein", E. Pauline Johnson " A Red Girl's Reasoning", E. Dickinson "poems 260, 269, 320, 340, 353, 479, 1096

Introduction:

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, E Pauline Johnson’s ‘A Red Girl’s Reasoning’ and Emily Dickinson’s poetry all explore what can be seen to be similar themes such as doomed love, unrequited passions and identity. Metaphor is also present in Dickinson’s poetry where the allegorical nature of her writings arouses feelings of intimate passion on a smaller yet no less powerful scale. One can observe an indelible link between all three female authors who were concerned with love ...

Introduction

The poems, The Charge of the Light Brigade written by Lord Alfred Tennyson and I Felt a Funeral in My Brain written by Emily Dickinson have a similar theme. These two poems talk about the theme of death in two different settings. Emily Dickinson’s poem, I Felt a Funeral in My Brain, is an allegorical description of the feeling experienced by the narrator that the normal function of her brain had come to an end, the similar way a person’s normal function of their bodies end when they die. Therefore, the funeral in her brain can be explained as a metaphor for ...

The poem “I am nobody, who are you?” is written by Emily Dickinson. This poem is published in the year 1891. The poem is about a child who asks question from others, and tells about him. This poem is an interesting as it tells clearly how somebody is living in this world, and how nobody is living in this world. By nobody the poetess means those people who do not consider themselves important, those who do not give priority to themselves. They consider the rights of others, and respect others. While somebody are those who consider themselves the privileged ...

This is My Letter to the World is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. She has written a lot of poems but This is My Letter to the World is a relative short poem with only eight lines. Emily’s poem has deep meaning behind it as she set out to withdraw from the society that has failed to notice her; she writes “This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me.” She resents and begrudges her visibility as she accuses the world of not communicating with her. She was passing information to the world and lessons on what ...

Introduction

If life is to be generally characterized in one word, then this word could indeed be the word ‘journey’. Life no matter the unique meaning each individual gives it, has always been considered as the journey of human existence in universe. The route of each journey, its destination, the places which are to be visited and its aim are all different according to the unique personality of each traveler. But one thing is for sure. Each individual once provided with this valuable, priceless gift knows that this gift is only given once so the journey had better worth it. ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

Compare and Contrast Poetry The poems discussed in this essay were written by two modern greats, who were among the most acclaimed poets of the modern English literature – Emily Dickinson and William E. Stafford. Though they both belonged to different centuries there are some notable similarities in their work. Both of them were unconventional, and they ironically shaped American poetry by abandoning its traditional styles and trends. In fact Dickinson’s works, sadly, got its due credit only after her demise. This essay is aimed at comparing and analyzing two of their notable works, namely, ‘Because I Could ...

Hugo Suarez

Abstract Alfred Lord Tennyson was perhaps the greatest poet of the nineteenth century Victorian era. While ‘In Memoriam,’ was written in honor of his best friend who died at a young age, some of his other famous works included ‘Ulysses,’ and ‘Morte d’ Arthur,’ which were again written in memory of his fond friend. The tones of these poems are nostalgic and reflect the mood and sentiments of a poet who had witnessed the unceremonious arrival of death from the outside. Emily Dickinson, a contemporary of Tennyson, was born in the United States. Her poem ‘Because I could not stop for ...

Summary of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Summary Part III of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson speaks about various perceptions of love, at least in the words of the renowned poet Emily Dickinson. As the poems speak generally about love, Dickinson has explored its several associated realities through her poems. The legacy of heartbreak is one aspect Dickinson has tackled in discussing love, seeing it as an inevitable circumstance, in which she says, “You left me two sweet legacies – a legacy of loveyou left me boundaries of pain.” Reservations on the amount of love given by partners to one another stands as another concern Dickinson ...

Summary of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Summary Part I of the book The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson contains poems pertaining to the nature of life. Poem I talks about how those who feel defeated all the time cherish success much more, as the first two lines state, “[s]uccess is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed”. Poem VII states the maladies of missed opportunities, which is undoubtedly a part of life. Poem X emphasizes on a book that recounts details on history, with the following lines signifying the identity of the subject: “[a] precious, mouldering pleasure ‘t is to meet an antique book”. The ...

Many times poets use their poetry to express their inner feelings. Emily Dickinson is one of those poets; in her poem, “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” she uses figurative language to express her thoughts about death. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born December 20, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years and for a short time, during her teenage years she studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. After Mount Holyoke she returned to her family home and there she remained and lived a reclusive life until her death on May 15, 1886. She ...

This paper entails an anthology of three poems. These poems include Langston Hughes’s Poem As I grew older, Shakespeare’s Sonnet #4, and Emily Dickinson’s "Nature" is what we see. These three poems are crafted by poets with great experience about life and nature. The overarching message that is presented in these three poems is that life is difficult and has numerous challenges. Every opportunity that comes our ways should be exploited to its fullest. Our lives should be simple so that we can sustainably protect resources for future generations. The rationale of this anthology is ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for death" Emily Dickinson is one of the significant contributors to American Literature and her poems are known for their theme of loneliness, and recollection of life changing inspirational moments. Lot of her works was indeed published much after her demise, and the earlier publication had many alterations done by the editors of the publication houses. This was due to the fact that Dickinson’s style of writing, broken rhyming meter and use of punctuations, showed a mark detachment from the traditional styles of that era. ‘Because I could not stop for ...

Death has been a recurrent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems. In the poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, too the poet weaves the words to portray the somber inevitability of human life. She uses symbolism throughout her work to create the ambience. The poet utilizes the character of Death in this poem as an extended metaphor. The poem goes on to delve deep into the nature of real death—the greatest truth of human nature. In this poem, the poet describes death as the final destination of life and explores symbolically how death caressingly guides one through ...

This paper focusses on the subject of deferred dreams and we study three poems in this regard. The poems ‘Wild Nights’ by Emily Dickinson, ‘Harlem’ and ‘Let America be America Again’ both by Langston Hughes, all highlight the pain of deferred dreams in different ways and related to different circumstances. Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘Wild Nights’ is a love poem expressing sexual passion and love. The poem falls into the genre of lyric poetry, there are three stanzas in the poem and each one has a quatrain. The poem expresses ardent affections and yearning to unite with the lover. The ...

Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson are certainly among the first group of women poets to emerge in America. Before their emergence, poetry was a male-dominated affair attracting little attention from women. As a result, it is not a mystery that both poets (Bradstreet and Dickinson) share some striking resemblance in the themes that they tackle, and incorporate heavy symbolism in their poems. However, each poet conveys her experiences within her historical context. For example, Anne Bradstreet inclines her poems towards puritanism while Emily Dickinson inclines her poems towards romanticism. Although Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson share similar views on the role of ...

Introduction

‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’ is a well acclaimed short poem by American poet, Emily Dickinson. Dickinson lived an isolated and comfortable life in her father’s house. Emily Dickinson is now considered as one of the most noteworthy American poets but there was a time when she was known for her unique prosaic lifestyle. Only a small number of literary works written by Dickinson were published during her lifetime. She wrote hundreds of poems that were discovered after her death. This paper intends to discuss the poem, ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes,’ one of the most famous literary works ...

Several literary authors and poets such as Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson and Alma Luz Villanueva have explored the theme of knowledge and individual power with much the same conclusions. These writers have especially addressed this topic from the perspective that people are inherently different and thus have a very hard time conforming to societal standards and meeting other people’s expectations. In essence, most people seek to be the same as everyone else despite the fact that they are individuals, thus making them different and unique.

Evidence

Langston Hughes in his poem, Theme for English B, presents a literary discourse on the ...

“Because I Could not Wait for Death,”

and

Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”

This is an essay comparing the similarities and differences between Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death,” and Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.” Both poet suffered bereavement of people who were very close to them and from this pain they produce their masterpieces.

The Theme of Death in Emily Dickinson’s

“Because I Could not Wait for Death,” and

Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”

Lord Alfred Tennyson and Emily Dickinson are legendary poets. They had both experienced the sting of death and write from deep within their souls about it. In Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” and Dickinson’s “Because I Could not Wait for Death,” ...

Literature review

When we talk about the artists from the 19th century, readers have prejudices about them as the authors of sentimental novels whose protagonists are mostly young girls who seek justice for themselves. This is not the case with Emily Dickinson. In order to understand her poems, readers need to have an insight in the social circumstances of the time when he lived. In these days, you were not supposed to have a public opinion, your job as a female, was limited to the running of the household and that was all. Even though Emily Dickinson was a mild and condescending person, her ...

I liked the poetry by Emily Dickinson because reading it out loud and hearing the sounds of her words together is a nice experience. I have friends and family so I’m not really lonely but I do feel like an outsider some of the time. I think that is why I like the poem I’m Nobody. Who are You? from Life so much. The poem is simple but it makes clear how it feels to be ‘nobody’ and how fun it is to find another ‘nobody’ so that you can make a new friend. The second verse explains the ...

I liked the poetry by Emily Dickinson because reading it out loud and hearing the sounds of her words together is a nice experience. I have friends and family so I’m not really lonely but I do feel like an outsider some of the time. I think that is why I like the poem I’m Nobody. Who are You? from Life so much. The poem is simple but it makes clear how it feels to be ‘nobody’ and how fun it is to find another ‘nobody’ so that you can make a new friend. The second verse explains the ...

Culture and identity has been enormously portrayed by authors in a number of literary works. This paper intends to discuss the culture and identity in three different literatures, The Raisin in the Sun, The Yellow Wallpaper, and I'm nobody! Who are you along with further discussion about several other related aspects of the subject matter. The Raisin in the Sun is a brilliant piece of literary work by Lorraine Hansberry. The author is well known for his portrayal of cultural and identical issues. In the play, raisin in the sun, the author widely discusses the African American culture. The story ...

Emily Dickinson’s life was not that of a conventional young lady of the nineteenth century. The men of her family were all lawyers, many turned to politics as well, and she often felt the limitations of her gender, writing to her future sister-in-law and friend Susan Gilbert, "Why can't I be a Delegate to the great Whig Convention?—don’t I know all about Daniel Webster, and the Tariff and the Law?" (Crumbley ¶ 2). Another incident that showed and likely promoted her individuality occurred in the years 1847-1848 while she studied at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary; when she “acquired ...

Emily Dickinson is well-known for writing on a variety of themes, death being major contender among them. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz” are two strong examples of poems with death as their overarching theme. The former introduces a woman narrator who appears to go on a journey with a gentleman, only revealing to the reader near the end of the piece that the man is Death and that the woman has been dead for some time. The latter poem depicts a woman attempting to die peacefully when a fly interrupts her tranquillity and her very passing as well. While ...

Analysis of Dickinson’s “The Brain is Wider and the Sky” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”

Poetry is an art that is often wrought by souls who have considerable difficulty interacting with people in the world at large. While Robert Frost and Maya Angelou may have felt comfortable reading their work at Presidential inaugurations, others such as Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson felt extremely out of place in society and chose instead to sequester themselves from the world as much as possible. It might seem that this ascetic sort of life would make it difficult to render poetry that is meaningful to readers who interact frequently with others, without the type of angst that so ...

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain’ by Emily Dickinson – defence in favour of the author

‘I Felt a Funeral in my Brain’ is possibly one of the most powerful poems written by Emily Dickinson and it describes emargination by townsfolk on the issue of thought and unhappiness. Sadness and reclusivity are issues which often crop up in Emily Dickinson poems and this one is really no exception.

The speaker as such is Dickinson herself and if he is brooding and unhappy then she definitely should not be in the least punished for her actions. Unhappiness is a state of mind and could be brought about by various factors which include a situation where home is creating a tense ...

What do a Victorian poet laureate and an American poetess from the heart of conservative Massachusetts have in common? They both have written poems that obsess about death. In the case of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, it was the death of his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam that triggered a giant poetic eulogy that took nearly two decades to write. In the case of Emily Dickinson's, on the other hand, it was one of her many poetic works that brings out her rather morbid attraction towards death. Though the works of these two writers may seem different at first sight, they are ...

What Does ‘Much Madness is Divinest Sense’ Say About Individualism?

Emily Dickinson’s poem, Much Madness is Divinest Sense addresses the idea of individualism by discussing how those who choose not to ‘fit in’ are classed as being mad whilst suggesting that those who don’t endeavour to be an individual are truly the mad ones: she states that as usual, it is the majority whose opinion prevails – “’Tis the majority – In this, as All, prevail” (Dickinson 4-5). Dickinson was a poet ahead of her time – she held much more modern views which did not conform to the social and cultural conventions of the time. According to George and Barbara ...

English Literature

Emily Dickinson’s poem entitled Because I Could Not Stop for Death is a quiet, unassuming and somewhat haunting poem which relies upon personification to present the character of death as a figure with human-like qualities. The poem concerns itself with a description of the speaker’s passage to the afterlife, accompanied by death. As such, the poem has some strangely languid effects in it – the choice of language encourages the reader to perform it in quite a slow, deliberate way whilst the plot is also, effectively, a slow moving procession. Additionally, the poem has a calmness to it – like the surface of a lake on a ...

Emily Dickinson was one of the most prolific and important poets to come out of the nineteenth century, not to mention one of the most important women. Her use of form and unconventional methods of writing made her a landmark among her peers, despite the fact that most of her works were published posthumously. From a feminist perspective, she could be seen as an incredibly vital author for that movement. While many scholars seem to separate Dickinson’s poetry from her gender, there are many unique connections to be made between her being a woman and the perspective that her poetry provides. ...

INTRODUCTION

In “Because I Would Not Stop for Death,” Emily Dickinson expresses a certain peace with death, as she sees Death approaching and walks with him for a time, observing everything that had come before in her life, and awaiting what lay next. This poem is one of her most well-known works, and is indicative of her attitudes toward the afterlife. (“Verse Cities,” 2008) This explication will examine each line of the poem in detail, and determine how it uses language and symbols to thoroughly examine this particular subject.

‘Because I could not stop for Death’

The beginning line establishes the fact that Death was not something that the ...

‘Safe in their Alabaster Chambers’ is unusual because a version of it was published in Dickinson’s lifetime on March 1st, 1862 in The Springfield Republican. However, the punctuation was changed, the unorthodox use of capital letters was rectified and the lineation was also changed (Sewell 489). The editor was keen to publish more poems in the following winter, but Dickinson refused, reluctant perhaps to allow her poems to be changed so radically. This poem also exists in different versions – as Dickinson kept returning to it and re-drafting it. The version that is being used for this paper will be ...

The most obvious theme in the Emily Dickinson's poem "I heard a Fly buzz is the theme of death and mortality which is clear in the first stanza of the poem “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died the fly in these case is omnipresent. The theme of death and mortality is also presented in "Because I could not stop for Death –" and "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain". The poem has a metre and a ballad structure.

The room is silent – stillness has been emphasized to show how silent the room was. There is "stillness in the air," and the ...