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Emily Dickinson 1830–86 . American poet, b. Amherst, MA. Considered one of the greatest poets in American literature. Stands outside the mainstream of 19th-century American literature (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Longfellow).
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Emily Dickinson 1830–86 • American poet, b. Amherst, MA. Considered one of the greatest poets in American literature. Stands outside the mainstream of 19th-century American literature (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Longfellow). • Before she was 30, she began to withdraw from village activities and gradually ceased to leave home at all. Often fled from visitors and eventually lived as a virtual recluse. • Dickinson published only seven poems during her lifetime. After her death in 1886, her sister Lavinia Dickinson discovered over 1,000 poems in her bureau. • The chief tension in her work comes from her inability to accept the orthodox religious faith of her day and her longing for its spiritual comfort. Immortality she called “the flood subject,” and she alternated confident statements of belief with lyrics of despairing uncertainty that were both reverent and rebellious. • Her verse, noted for its aphoristic (statement of truth) style, its wit, its delicate metrical variation and irregular rhymes, its directness of statement, and its bold and startling imagery, has won enormous acclaim and had a great influence on 20th-century poetry.
