EMILY DICKINSON

1830-1866

EARLY YEARS• Second of three children in Amherst, MA• Father was a lawyer – wealthy and respected• Attended Puritan church services where father was a leader•Well educated for a woman of her time. • Attended Amherst Academy – modern curriculum of English and sciences, Latin, botany, and math

The Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, MA

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS…

•Only left home TWICE• Family library provided her access to books about religion, works by Emerson, and other transcendentalists • 1850: began to write and circulate poems around to friends• First publication: “Sic transit Gloria mandi” in the Springfield Darily Republican in 1852

PUBLICATIONS • 1862: second poem published – “Safe in their alabaster chambers”• Became a recluse around this time

•Mentor: Thomas Wentworth Higginson • Responded to an advertisement he placed about developing young writers• Advised against publishing – “raw form” and subject matter

LATER YEARS…•Suffered from eye-trouble •Allegedly … dressed entirely in white, communicated indirectly with visitors from behind a folding screen or via notes and gifts let down from her window into the garden •During civil war, wrote an estimated 800 poems

AFTER HER DEATH…

• Locked box found in her bedroom containing 40 notebooks full of poems•Unarranged and only 24 were titled

NOTORIETY AFTER DEATH•Higginson published volumes Dickinson’s works but edited them heavily for conventional punctuation, form , and content•His edition helped her poetry gain national prominence and attention

Emily’s Room and Dress

THEME AND TONE

•Observer who used images to probe universal themes: the wonders of nature, identity of self, death and immortality, and love •Uses humor and pathos

FORM AND STYLE• Lyric poems = short poems w/ single speaker who

expresses thoughts and feelings• Speaker is first person (“I”) and not necessarily Emily

herself• Fewer than 10 of her 1800 are titled – given numbers

as titles for first lines act as titles • Lines of 3 and 4 iambs: trimester and tetrameter • Imperfect rhyme – slant rhyme or approximate rhyme

TRIMETER AND TETRAMETER

I dwell in possibility -4 iambsA fairer House than Prose -3 iambs

More numerous of windows -4 iambsSuperior for doors -3 iambs

DICKINSON ASSIGNMENT, 1/2

Title of Poems

What is the

meaning?

Use an example from text

to support

your answer

3 Examples of Poetic Devices: imagery, metaphor, simile,

alliteration,

consonance,

symbol, personificati

on

Write one line that is

trimeterand one that is

tetrameter

Tone and Mood:

use an example from text

to support

your answer

What time in

Dickinson’s life do you believe

she wrote this? Why?

Title

Title

ASSIGNMENT• Choose 2 Dickinson poems• Complete the following tasks:• Identify 3 examples of the follow ing poetic devices (red): imagery,

symbol, metaphor, simile, allusion, alliteration, consonance, personification• Identify the meter of the poem (orange): trimeter (3 iambs), tetrameter

(4), pentameter (5)• What is the meaning of this poem? Give evidence to support your analysis• What is the tone/mood? Provide evidence• At what time in Emily’s life do you believe she wrote this? Why?

• Choose an emotion to write a poem about – using “254” as a model. Must be 3 stanzas long