4 Emily Dickinson as a child with siblings left to right Emily Austin Lavinia
FOREWORD FOREWORD Perhaps no poet has ever penned as many memorable lines as Emily Dickinson 1830 86 It is shocking but true that only a handful of her poems were published in her lifetime Fame came posthumously to this reclusive New England poet so that her well-known line I’m Nobody Who are you may have reflected how she truly felt about her work What is unique about The Belle of Amherst are her unorthodox broken meter and slant rhymes that famous use of dashes a richness of metaphor seldom found in poetry old or new and dazzling originality Dickinson’s themes were universal eter nity immortality heaven hell and nature and her manner direct emotional and ruthlessly honest Raised in a strict Puritanical household young Emily’s parents believed a classi cal education indispensable She was never comfortable with orthodox religion The soul should stand ajar she wrote ready to welcome the ecstatic experience This experience she found most often not in intellectual pursuits or personal relationships but in the beauty of nature and through inner reflection Dickinson also sought spirituality in the poems of much-admired poets such as John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and in the deeply personal verses she wrote alternately brooding and joyous Dickinson’s poems speak volumes in just a few words about the emotional condition of the poet the poem’s speaker or the reader sometimes in meanings initially obscure Although she never wrote a long poem her readers may need to devote more time and attention to her brief lines than they would to a longer work of literature Perhaps Dickinson’s exaggerated use of dashes was her way of telling the reader to slow down and pay close attention After Emily’s death her beloved sister Lavinia was instructed to burn her letters which are poetry in themselves Lavinia or Vinnie discovered hundreds of her sister’s verses stitched together by the poet herself and subsequently published in various versions Of Emily Dickinson’s poetry let Australian-born essayist Clive James have the last word She could enamel the inside of a raindrop J Patrick Lewis United States Children’s Poet Laureate 2011-13 5
INTRODUCTION INTRODUC So I conclude that space time are things of the body have little or nothing to do with our selves My Country is Truth At first this statement by Emily Dickinson might seem odd After all Dickinson was one of America’s most mysterious literary figures She did all she could to disguise the truth about her life purposely shrouding herself in a veil of secrecy and eventually withdrawing from contact with most people outside her family Yet what she lacked in personal candor she made up for in literary achievement Within the cocoon of her room on the second floor of her family home Dickinson created poetry with such emotional and intellectual depth and such insight into human nature that it still rings true for readers today Many of the nearly 1,800 poems she wrote are now ranked among the world’s finest and she is recognized as one of American literature’s most significant poets 6 The only authenticated photograph of Emily Dickinson dated circa 1847
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind 7
