Emily Dickinson

Introduction

Some people might crisis her writing, but those people just don't understand it. Some people might say she lived a secluded life, but do they know that she was in close contact with her family and couple of her close friends. Yet there are some people like me, who praise and admire constantly at the brilliance and innovative person we know as Emily Dickinson (Buell, 323-345).

Family Background

Born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson was raised by a family that was famous for educational and political activity. An orthodox Calvinist, her father was a lawyer and served in Congress. She attended Amherst Academy, but quit the school due to homesickness, Staying in the comfort of her own home, Dickinson started to write fairly conventional poetry using the writings of John Keats and Robert Browning as her inspiration. However, she soon grew out of the comfort zone of Keats and Browning's style of writing, experimenting, transforming and very soon developing her own style of poetry, which would shape and mould American Poetry.

Dickinson believed that home was the only place that would provide a sense of security, which is why she isolated herself from the world after the Civil War, restricting all contacts, with exceptions, to letters. There were rumoured to have been two men in her life that really had an impact on her and her poetry. One was Reverend Charles Wadsworth who inspired her thoughts and poetry. Some people concluded that it was his departure that caused the heartbroken feelings shown in some of her poems (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/emilydic.htm). The other person was Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, who encouraged her to publish her poems and to whom she addressed many poems to. However, she never did, because she believed that life is not just about finding dame and significance. Like she said, she do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name, she wanted to set an example with her own life instead of publishing at every chance she got. She believed that fame was not something permanent describing it as fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate. (Emily Dickinson)

Juvenilia

Among Dickinson's early relationships with young women of her own age, one of the most intense was with Abiah Root. It can be noted here that with the odd exception of letters to her sister Lavinia the incidence ...