emily dickinson

I mentioned previously that I was planning on doing features regularly on famous poets, why they're important, etc. I'm going to start off this feature with the beautiful late Emily Dickinson, a very influencial American poet. I want to dedicate this to my friend Sarah, because Emily is her favorite, and she inspired me to create this little place! So Sarah, this one is for you.

Emily was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, and during her lifetime wrote over 1800 poems, most of which were only published after her death. She was a reclusive woman, though she had many friends that she wrote letters to frequently. She never married, and was notorious for only wearing white in the latter parts of her life. She kept an interesting and mysterious correspondance with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic, in which she described herself physically as:


"... I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves..."

Thanks to Emily's sister Lavinia, her poetry was published about 4 years or so after she died. She definitely had no concept of the level of fame she would achieve - she's been dead for 122 years, and she's still one of the famous poets that has ever lived, and certainly the most famous female poet of all time. She changed the way poetry was written, using slant verse and ballad formats for many of her poems, and also her unusual use of capitalization and punctuation. Nobody in the 1800s wrote poetry the way she did, with the consequence that some of her works that were published during her lifetime were edited to fit the "poetic criteria" of the day. She was truly a pioneer.


Here is one of her most famous poems - I'm sure many of you have already read this, but for those that haven't, I encourage you to. And I guess if you have already, drinking in her lovely immortal words again won't hurt.


because i could not stop for death

"Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the School, where Children strove
At recess in the ring
We passed the fields of gazing grain
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us
The dews drew quivering and chill
For only Gossamer, my gown
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the GROUND
The roof was scarcely visible
The cornice in the ground.

Since then 'tis centuries and yet
Feels shorter than the DAY
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity."

So beautiful. And thats all about Emily!

Whose your favorite poet?


SJ