Second blog on: Emily Dickinson is the sixth poet in my poet dedication series - Robert Lindley's Blog

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..