Emily Dickinson is the sixth poet in my poet dedication series,
and the first female poet to be honored so far. Her
poetry is magnificent in so many ways and her life was
that of a true genius, a lonely person that had suffered
so many losses, so many deaths of friends famil , loved ones.
In fact much of her poetry is about death, dark and very sad
life experiences. This first blog is the first link of two
I will present. This one is far more brief a bio than the
next blog will be. Ihope you find thise great poet, herlife,
her poetry interesting enough toread this and the
second much longer bio on her amazing life, talent and
sufferings.
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Second link, bio
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-dickinson
Emily Dickinson
1830–1886
Emily Dickinson is one of America’s greatest and most original poets of all time.
She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of
poetry and the poet’s work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order
to free it from conventional restraints. Like writers such as Charlotte Brontë
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she crafted a new type of persona for the first person.
The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, like those in Brontë’s and Browning’s works, are
sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well
as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define
meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison,
Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing
what was possible but not yet realized. Like the Concord Transcendentalists whose works
she knew well, she saw poetry as a double-edged sword. While it liberated the individual,
it as readily left him ungrounded. The literary marketplace, however, offered new
ground for her work in the last decade of the 19th century. When the first volume
of her poetry was published in 1890, four years after her death, it met with
stunning success. Going through eleven editions in less than two years, the poems
eventually extended far beyond their first household audiences.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830
to Edward and Emily (Norcross) Dickinson. At the time of her birth, Emily’s father
was an ambitious young lawyer. Educated at Amherst and Yale, he returned to his
hometown and joined the ailing law practice of his father, Samuel Fowler Dickinson.
Edward also joined his father in the family home, the Homestead, built by
Samuel Dickinson in 1813. Active in the Whig Party, Edward Dickinson was elected
to the Massachusetts State Legislature (1837-1839) and the
Massachusetts State Senate (1842-1843). Between 1852 and 1855 he served a single
term as a representative from Massachusetts to the U.S. Congress. In Amherst he
presented himself as a model citizen and prided himself on his civic work—treasurer
of Amherst College, supporter of Amherst Academy, secretary to the Fire Society,
and chairman of the annual Cattle Show. Comparatively little is known of
Emily’s mother, who is often represented as the passive wife of a domineering
husband. Her few surviving letters suggest a different picture, as does the scant
information about her early education at Monson Academy. Academy papers and
records discovered by Martha Ackmann reveal a young woman dedicated to her
studies, particularly in the sciences.
By the time of Emily’s early childhood, there were three children in the household.
Her brother, William Austin Dickinson, had preceded her by a year and a half. Her
sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson, was born in 1833. All three children attended
the one-room primary school in Amherst and then moved on to Amherst Academy, the
school out of which Amherst College had grown. The brother and sisters’ education
was soon divided. Austin was sent to Williston Seminary in 1842; Emily and Vinnie
continued at Amherst Academy. By Emily Dickinson’s account, she delighted in all
aspects of the school—the curriculum, the teachers, the students. The school prided
itself on its connection with Amherst College, offering students regular attendanc
e at college lectures in all the principal subjects— astronomy, botany, chemistry,
geology, mathematics, natural history, natural philosophy, and zoology. As this
list suggests, the curriculum reflected the 19th-century emphasis on science. That
emphasis reappeared in Dickinson’s poems and letters through her fascination with
naming, her skilled observation and cultivation of flowers, her carefully wrought
descriptions of plants, and her interest in “chemic force.” Those interests,
however, rarely celebrated science in the same spirit as the teachers advocated.
In an early poem, she chastised science for its prying interests. Its system
interfered with the observer’s preferences; its study took the life out of living
things. In “‘Arcturus’ is his other name” she writes,
“I pull a flower from the woods - / A monster with a glass /
Computes the stamens in a breath - / And has her in a ‘class!’“ At the same time,
Dickinson’s study of botany was clearly a source of delight. She encouraged her
friend Abiah Root to join her in a school assignment: “Have you made an
herbarium yet? I hope you will, if you have not, it would be such a treasure to you.”
She herself took that assignment seriously, keeping the herbarium generated by her
botany textbook for the rest of her life. Behind her school botanical studies lay
a popular text in common use at female seminaries. Written by Almira H. Lincoln,
Familiar Lectures on Botany (1829) featured a particular kind of natural history,
emphasizing the religious nature of scientific study. Lincoln was one of many early
19th-century writers who forwarded the “argument from design.” She assured her
students that study of the natural world invariably revealed God. Its impeccably
ordered systems showed the Creator’s hand at work.
Lincoln’s assessment accorded well with the local Amherst authority in natural
philosophy.
Edward Hitchcock, president of Amherst College, devoted his life to maintaining
the unbroken connection between the natural world and its divine Creator. He was
a frequent lecturer at the college, and Emily had many opportunities to hear him
speak. His emphasis was clear from the titles of his books—Religious Lectures on
Peculiar Phenomena in the Four Seasons (1861), The Religion of Geology and Its
Connected Sciences (1851), and Religious Truth Illustrated from Science (1857).
Like Louis Agassiz at Harvard, Hitchcock argued firmly that Sir Charles Lyell’s
belief-shaking claims in the Principles of Geology (1830-1833) were still explicable
through the careful intervention of a divine hand.
Dickinson found the conventional religious wisdom the least compelling part of
these arguments. From what she read and what she heard at Amherst Academy, scientific
observation proved its excellence in powerful description. The writer who could
say what he saw was invariably the writer who opened the greatest meaning to his
readers. While this definition fit well with the science practiced by natural
historians such as Hitchcock and Lincoln, it also articulates the poetic theory
then being formed by a writer with whom Dickinson’s name was often later linked.
In 1838 Emerson told his Harvard audience, “Always the seer is a sayer.
” Acknowledging the human penchant for classification, he approached this phenomenon
with a different intent. Less interested than some in using the natural world to
prove a supernatural one, he called his listeners and readers’ attention to the
creative power of definition. The individual who could say what is was the
individual for whom words were power.
While the strength of Amherst Academy lay in its emphasis on science, it also
contributed to Dickinson’s development as a poet. The seven years at the academy
provided her with her first “Master,” Leonard Humphrey, who served as principal
of the academy from 1846 to 1848. Although Dickinson undoubtedly esteemed him
while she was a student, her response to his unexpected death in 1850 clearly
suggests her growing poetic interest. She wrote Abiah Root that her only tribute
was her tears, and she lingered over them in her description. She will not brush
them away, she says, for their presence is her expression. So, of course, is her
language, which is in keeping with the memorial verses expected of 19th-century mourners.
Humphrey’s designation as “Master” parallels the other relationships Emily was
cultivating at school. At the academy she developed a group of close friends within
and against whom she defined her self and its written expression. Among these were
Abiah Root, Abby Wood, and Emily Fowler. Other girls from Amherst were among her
friends—particularly Jane Humphrey, who had lived with the Dickinsons while
attending Amherst Academy. As was common for young women of the middle class,
the scant formal schooling they received in the academies for “young ladies”
provided them with a momentary autonomy. As students, they were invited to take
their intellectual work seriously. Many of the schools, like Amherst Academy,
required full-day attendance, and thus domestic duties were subordinated to
academic ones. The curriculum was often the same as that for a young man’s
education. At their “School for Young Ladies,” William and Waldo Emerson, for
example, recycled their Harvard assignments for their students. When asked
for advice about future study, they offered the reading list expected of
young men. The celebration in the Dickinson household when Austin completed
his study of David Hume’s History of England (1762) could well have been
repeated for daughters, who also sought to master that text. Thus, the time
at school was a time of intellectual challenge and relative freedom for girls,
especially in an academy such as Amherst, which prided itself on its progressive
understanding of education. The students looked to each other for their discussions,
grew accustomed to thinking in terms of their identity as scholars, and faced a
marked change when they left school.
Dickinson’s last term at Amherst Academy, however, did not mark the end of her
formal schooling. As was common, Dickinson left the academy at the age of 15 in
order to pursue a higher, and for women, final, level of education. In the fall
of 1847 Dickinson entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Under the guidance of
Mary Lyon, the school was known for its religious predilection. Part and parcel
of the curriculum were weekly sessions with Lyon in which religious questions
were examined and the state of the students’ faith assessed. The young women
were divided into three categories: those who were “established Christians,
” those who “expressed hope,” and those who were “without hope.” Much has
been made of Emily’s place in this latter category and in the widely circulated
story that she was the only member of that group. Years later fellow student
Clara Newman Turner remembered the moment when Mary Lyon “asked all those who
wanted to be Christians to rise.” Emily remained seated. No one else did. Turner
reports Emily’s comment to her: “‘They thought it queer I didn’t rise’—adding
with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I thought a lie would be queerer.’“ Written in 1894,
shortly after the publication of the first two volumes of Dickinson’s poetry and
the initial publication of her letters, Turner’s reminiscences carry the burden
of the 50 intervening years as well as the reviewers and readers’ delight in the
apparent strangeness of the newly published Dickinson. The solitary rebel may well
have been the only one sitting at that meeting, but the school records indicate
that Dickinson was not alone in the “without hope” category. In fact, 30 students
finished the school year with that designation.
The brevity of Emily’s stay at Mount Holyoke—a single year—has given rise to much
speculation as to the nature of her departure. Some have argued that the beginning
of her so-called reclusiveness can be seen in her frequent mentions of homesickness
in her letters, but in no case do the letters suggest that her regular activities
were disrupted. She did not make the same kind of close friends as she had at
Amherst Academy, but her reports on the daily routine suggest that she was fully
a part of the activities of the school. Additional questions are raised by the
uncertainty over who made the decision that she not return for a second year.
Dickinson attributed the decision to her father, but she said nothing further a
bout his reasoning. Edward Dickinson’s reputation as a domineering individual in
private and public affairs suggests that his decision may have stemmed from his
desire to keep this particular daughter at home. Dickinson’s comments occasionally
substantiate such speculation. She frequently represents herself as essential to
her father’s contentment. But in other places her description of her father is quite
different (the individual too busy with his law practice to notice what occurred at home).
The least sensational explanation has been offered by biographer Richard Sewall.
Looking over the Mount Holyoke curriculum and seeing how many of the texts duplicated
those Dickinson had already studied at Amherst, he concludes that Mount Holyoke had
little new to offer her. Whatever the reason, when it came Vinnie’s turn to attend a
female seminary, she was sent to Ipswich.
Dickinson’s departure from Mount Holyoke marked the end of her formal schooling.
It also prompted the dissatisfaction common among young women in the early 19th century.
Upon their return, unmarried daughters were indeed expected to demonstrate their
dutiful nature by setting aside their own interests in order to meet the needs of
the home. For Dickinson the change was hardly welcome. Her letters from the early
1850s register dislike of domestic work and frustration with the time constraints
created by the work that was never done. “God keep me from what they call households,
” she exclaimed in a letter to Root in 1850.
Particularly annoying were the number of calls expected of the women in the Homestead.
Edward Dickinson’s prominence meant a tacit support within the private sphere. The
daily rounds of receiving and paying visits were deemed essential to social standing.
Not only were visitors to the college welc..... more at link..