Emily Dickinson

Great Poets, the - Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is often imagined as a kind of rare, delicate porcelain creation, fragile to the point of untouchability: dressed all in white, fearful of strangers, almost as fearful of friends, living her life like a hermit, hermetically sealed in a New England house, her poems tiny, fragmentary being released like wisps of air from someone trying to hold their breath. In part, this image is wholly deserved she was indeed reclusive; she did dress all in white; she hid when someone she had corresponded with for years came to play the piano. She published almost no works during her life; and that life was essentially hidden from view. As a result, the ambiguity of her poetry is seen as a mirror of her enigmatic life, and the verses seen as gnomic, almost visionary. An enigmatic life is a positive boon to myth-making, of course; and ambiguous poetry maintains the need for critical re-evaluation. But Emily Dickinsons works have merited their 120 years of attention because of their idiosyncratic place in the history and development of American verse; and the expressive beauty of the poems themselves. This careful but imaginative selection shows the remarkable variety she produced despite the miniature nature of the medium.