Author Background

Born into an influential and socially prominent New England family in 1830, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) benefited from a level of education and mobility that most of her contemporaries, female and male, could not comprehend. The middle child of Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross, Emily, along with her older brother Austin and younger sister Lavinia, received both an extensive formal education and the informal education that came by way of countless visitors to the family homestead during Edward Dickinson’s political career.

Contrary to popular depictions of her life, Dickinson did travel outside of Amherst but ultimately chose to remain at home in the close company of family and friends.  Although she spent most of her adult life in seclusion in her family’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson maintained contact with the outside world through her letters, over a thousand of which have survived. After her death, Dickinson’s family published the almost 1800 poems that she had written; most of the poems were not titled, and editors have had to choose how to organize the poems.

Writing Career

Now one of the best-known American poets, Emily Dickinson was not known during her lifetime; ten poems were published anonymously, and the rest were published after her death.  An intensely private person, Dickinson exerted almost singular control over the distribution of her poetry during her lifetime. That control, coupled with early portrayals of her as reclusive, has led many readers to assume that Dickinson was a fragile and timid figure whose formal, mysterious, concise, and clever poetry revealed the mind of a writer trapped in the rigid gender confines of the nineteenth century.

More recent scholarship demonstrates not only the fallacy of Dickinson’s depiction as the ghostly “Belle of Amherst,” but also reveals the technical complexity of her poetry that predates the Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore by almost three-quarters of a century.

In the selections that follow, Dickinson’s poetry displays both her technical proficiency and her embrace of techniques that were new to the nineteenth century. Like her contemporary Walt Whitman, Dickinson used poetry to show her readers familiar landscapes from a fresh perspective.

Selected Poems

These selections illustrate the poet’s mastery of the lyric—a short poem that often expresses a single theme such as the speaker’s mood or feeling.  In many of her poems, Dickinson’s vibrant language demonstrates a vital spark in contrast to her reclusive image.  For example, “The Soul selects her own Society –” shows Dickinson using well-known images of power and authority to celebrate the independence of the soul in the face of expectations.  “Because I could not stop for Death –,” one of the most famous poems in the Dickinson canon, forms an important bookend to “The Soul” in that both poems show Dickinson’s precise control over the speaker’s relationship to not only the natural world but also the divine. While death cannot be avoided, neither is it to be feared; the speaker of this poem reminds readers that the omnipresence of death does not mean that death is immanent. Mortality and desire combine in precise lyrics that awaken both our imagination and our awareness of the natural world.

Dickinson’s poetry resists easy categorization within literary movements. Traditionally Romantic themes such as nature and passion are presented in the startlingly direct—or even blunt—manner of Realism; while not truly Transcendentalist, the poems concern themselves with finding meaning in one’s self, rather than in material possessions or earthly concerns; her unconventional use of language, punctuation, and approximate rhyme (or slant rhyme) rejects traditional styles in the way that later Modernists would embrace.

In fact, it was only with the advent of Modernism that Dickinson’s poems received the kind of widespread acclaim for their innovation and daring that would mark her as one of the most significant poets of the 19th century. The poems often use common meter as a starting point (a pattern of an eight syllable line followed by a six syllable line, sometimes referred to as hymn meter), but develop other patterns—or lack of pattern—from there.  Her unusual approaches to common themes such as love, death, nature, and identity remain engaging to readers to the present day.

I’m “wife” — I’ve finished that —

I’m “wife” — I’ve finished that —

That other state —

I’m Czar — I’m “Woman” now —

It’s safer so —

How odd the Girl’s life looks

Behind this soft Eclipse —

I think that Earth feels so

To folks in Heaven — now —

This being comfort — then

That other kind — was pain —

But why compare?

I’m “Wife”! Stop there!

I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs —

I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs —

The name They dropped upon my face

With water, in the country church

Is finished using, now,

And They can put it with my Dolls,

My childhood, and the string of spools,

I’ve finished threading — too —

Baptized, before, without the choice,

But this time, consciously, of Grace —

Unto supremest name —

Called to my Full — The Crescent dropped —

Existence’s whole Arc, filled up,

With one small Diadem.

My second Rank — too small the first —

Crowned — Crowing — on my Father’s breast —

A half unconscious Queen —

But this time — Adequate — Erect,

With Will to choose, or to reject,

And I choose, just a Crown —

The Soul selects her own Society —

The Soul selects her own Society —

Then — shuts the Door —

To her divine Majority —

Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —

At her low Gate —

Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling

Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —

Choose One —

Then — close the Valves of her attention —

Like Stone —

She rose to His Requirement — dropt

She rose to His Requirement — dropt

The Playthings of Her Life

To take the honorable Work

Of Woman, and of Wife —

If ought She missed in Her new Day,

Of Amplitude, or Awe —

Or first Prospective — Or the Gold

In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned — as the Sea

Develop Pearl, and Weed,

But only to Himself — be known

The Fathoms they abide —

Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,

Their lessons scarcely done;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then ‘t is centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses’ heads

Were toward eternity.

The brain is wider than the sky

The brain is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,

The one the other will include

With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,

For, hold them, blue to blue,

The one the other will absorb,

As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,

For, lift them, pound for pound,

And they will differ, if they do,

As syllable from sound.

Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I ‘ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

I heard a fly buzz when I died

I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air

Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,

And breaths were gathering sure

For that last onset, when the king

Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away

What portion of me I

Could make assignable,—and then

There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,

Between the light and me;

And then the windows failed, and then

I could not see to see.

If I can stop one heart from breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

Sources

Dickinson, Emily.  “I’m “wife” — I’ve finished that —.”  Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs —.”  Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “The Soul selects her own Society —.”  Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “She rose to His Requirement — dropt.” Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “Because I could not stop for Death.”  Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “The brain is wider than the sky.”  Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “Hope is the thing with feathers.”  Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” Public Domain.

Dickinson, Emily.  “If I can stop one heart from breaking.”  Public Domain.

Kurant, Wendy.  Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution.  2019, English Open Textbooks, https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/19, CCA-SA 4.0

Peterson, Scott D. et al.  American Literatures After 1865.  University of Missouri – St. Louis, https://umsystem.pressbooks.pub/ala1865/, CCA-SA 4.0

Turlington, Anita et al.  Compact Anthology of World Literature II.  University of North Georgia Press, 2022, https://alg.manifoldapp.org/projects/compact-anthology-of-world-literature-ii, CCA-SA 4.0