I have never been a fan of poetry. I don't understand it well. Instead of saying,
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The nerves sit ceremonies, like Tombs –” (1053)
why can't she say, “A broken heart is not fun, and it takes time to heal,”? Anyway, since I have no idea what Dickinson was trying to say in her poems, I would like to give a short biography of her life.
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She went to boarding school, but returned after a year because she was too homesick to stay. This pattern continued throughout her life – she never left home and rarely had visitors. She did, however, correspond with many poets, writers, and scholars in her lifetime. A few of her influences included: William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As Dickinson aged, her seclusion became worse. She considered her dog Carlo her closest friend. (She named him after the dog in Jane Eyre.) Carlo died after sixteen years together. She even got to the point where she would only talk to visitors through a closed door. In her seclusion, she wrote most of her works during the mid 1860s. She also started to only wear white. Dickinson was surrounded by death – her mother, father, brother, and favorite nephew all died within her life. After a long battle of kidney disease, Dickinson died at the age of fifty-five on May 15, 1886.
“This is the hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons. Recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –” (1053)
I agree with you! Her poems have to be broken down more than I would like but she is an amazing writer once I can understand what the point is that she is trying to get across. But then again once you think about it, writers in the 1800's didn't just come out and say what was on thier mind, it was more of reading between the lines to try and understand it's meaning. what fun would it be to read something and automatically understand it's meaning and purpose. Rather than reading something and breaking it down to possibly discover a hidden meaning with a much higher impact on your thinking of the poem.
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