Kisha+Patel

Emily Dickinson

Topic: Emily Dickinson is one of the most original 19th century american poets.

Thesis: Emily Dickinson is one of the most orginal 19th century american poets cause she explored spirtuality, created diverse poetry, and used metaphors, capitalization, rhyming meter and dashes in a effective innovative style.

Source 1: (web) Merriman, C.D. "The Literature Network." //www.online-literature.com/dickinson/// The Literature Network, 2006. Web. 26 Apr 2010.


 * 1) among ranks of poets like Walt Whitman
 * 2) considered one of the most original 19th Century American poets.
 * 3) known for use of rhyming meter
 * 4) use of dashes
 * 5) use of random capitalization
 * 6) creative use of metaphor
 * 7) Questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality in poetry
 * 8) avoided romantic style
 * 9) used imagery
 * 10) sometimes her poems were witty
 * 11) sometimes frank
 * 12) sometimes sad
 * 13) sometimes joyous
 * 14) her sophistication is shown through her poetry
 * 15) she has influenced many poets into the 21st century
 * 16) she studied early literature and works in latin at a young age
 * 17) Samuel Bowles (a friend of her brothers) published her poems in //Springfield Republican//
 * 18) her work was also published in //Atlantic Monthly//
 * 19) in 1864 a eye doctor told her never again to read or write
 * 20) after she died, her sister published her work

Source 2: (web) Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 4: Emily Dickinson." //PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide//. 27 Apr 2010 //web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/dickinson.html//


 * 1) her work is often work with other traditions in literature
 * 2) she read and enjoyed alot of work from the 17th century
 * 3) she voices ideas of indepence and indivualism
 * 4) its been said New Englanders are often said to be quiet and shy, and Dickinson never wrote long poems
 * 5) influence by William Cullen Bryant and Henry Thoreau
 * 6) Highly compressed, compact, shy of being exposed
 * 7) she will say no more than she must
 * 8) Her lyrics are her highly subjective. One-fifth of them begin with "I"
 * 9) Use of poetic forms
 * 10) she used many themes (examples below)
 * 11) love; she loved and lost many times
 * 12) nature; she was fasinated
 * 13) faith; she looked for her own faith
 * 14) doubt; she doubted her family's religon
 * 15) pain and suffering; she talks about grief alot
 * 16) death: talks a lot about the fact of human death
 * 17) they is very little known about her life
 * 18) dropped out of college
 * 19) she recieved lots of encouragement from family and friends but didnt like to publish her poems
 * 20) her poetry was for herself; she didnt feel the need to show it to others because she wrote for herself, not to become popular or rich.

Source 3: (online print) GENOCCHIO, BENJAMIN. "Works That Speak Volumes in a 19th-Century Poet’s Voice ." //New York Times// (2007): n. pag. Web. 26 Apr 2010. ////


 * 1) Her popularity grew with the poems she published and she along with Walt Whitman became the best poets of the 19th century
 * 2) There are many biography's about her, but they arent important.
 * 3) "But most of what we need to know about her is in the poems, which extol a love of nature, plants and gardening"
 * 4) Poets often study the work of other poets like Dickinson, and like her, began to portray nature
 * 5) Dickinson's poems are often converted to other types of art
 * 6) Lesley Dill, makes sculptures that are based off Dickinson's poems
 * 7) She has fractured, agonized-looking figure made of painted bronze, with a white ribbon emerging from one foot, the ribbon reads, “Dust is the only secret,” the opening line from one of Dickinson’s death-oriented poems.
 * 8) Peter Edlund’s antique-looking oil paintings echo scenes from Dickinson’s poems, some relating to plants in the gardens, others to animals
 * 9) Francis Cape’s “The Angle of a Landscape” which takes its title from the first line of a poem by Dickinson in which she describes the world visible from her bedroom. Mr. Francis has created a secluded, screened space in the gallery in imitation of a room where Dickinson slept, looked out the window and possibly sat down at a desk to write the poem.
 * 10) Tacy Levy’s has hundreds of pieces of nylon thread tufts attached to a window to filter and reflect the soft afternoon sunlight. It uses a line from a Dickinson poem about sunsets as a launch pad
 * 11) Marina Zurkow’s sculptures hanging from the ceiling show Dickinson-inspired garden scenes
 * 12) This shows that Dickinson was very influential to various people
 * 13) She wrote diverse poems that were about many different things poeple could relate too
 * 14) she had a lot of poems about gardens
 * 15) she also had a lot of poems about death
 * 16) these all helped artists create moods within their own fields
 * 17) her inspiration is given to other poets, artists, sculpturers, painters, composers, and everyday people who read her work
 * 18) all her poetry has underlying connection and meaning just like the artist's works
 * 19) she shows that her words can be protrayed various different ways, depending on who is reading them and in what context
 * 20) she was a very influential being from the 19th century to the 21st, and more to come

Source 4: (online print) Shackford, Martha Hale. "The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." //Atlantic// January 1913: n. pag. Web. 26 Apr 2010. //.//


 * 1) every poet is unique
 * 2) every poet has a different way of conveying thoughts and feelings
 * 3) Dickinson wrote strong sharp poems
 * 4) her writing overthrew the reader
 * 5) she strongly criticized spirituality
 * 6) she was one of the most original writers of all time
 * 7) critics may complain that her work isn't justified in questioning spirituality
 * 8) most of her work is written in short measures
 * 9) the readers of her work must be intelligent to understand the meaning of her words and punctuation
 * 10) her crazy rhythm shows poetic meaning in only a way that she could create
 * 11) she has such diverse topics of poetry
 * 12) upon reading a poem a reader may feel various emotions such as insight, confusion, anger, faith, questions, or just be content
 * 13) her poems are very stimulating for examination
 * 14) she had a lot of creative energy
 * 15) to her, poetry meant expressing vital meanings and feelings
 * 16) she learns how to talk about all her feelings without giving herself a label
 * 17) she has grim poems about death, and beautiful joyous poems about gardens
 * 18) she love of mystery and symbolism lead her to writing such strong pieces
 * 19) she had the most unique way of capturing how she felt and how you felt into one
 * 20) she is one of the most powerful poets of all time and someone who deserves much appreciation and less criticism for her beliefs.

EXTRA NOTES: SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Dickinson’s Poetry.” //SparkNotes.com//. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 22 Apr. 2010.


 * 1) unlike Walt Whitman, she didnt write about her surrondings and what was going on in the world
 * 2) Whitman and other poets around that time wrote poetry about the war.
 * 3) Dickinson's poetry, show no insight of what time she was living in.
 * 4) her use of punctuation like dashes and capitalization make her poetry stronger.
 * 5) she wrote 1,776 poems
 * 6) only 10 of 1,776 poems she published, the rest were published by her sister after she died
 * 7) she fits a lot of meaning into a few words
 * 8) her poems are hard to understand at first, but after you get them, your brain explodes with insight and thrill
 * 9) she and Whitman are the 2 best poets of the 19th century
 * 10) she usually wrote on 4 line stanzas (quatrains)
 * 11) she had a ABCB ryhme scheme
 * 12) she had alternations in the iambic meter
 * 13) long dashes were used to interrupt the ryhme scheme
 * 14) her poems are usually about her emotions tied in with how everyone else would feel too, in order to build a writer/reader connection
 * 15) she usually wrote about emotional experiences she had in her life.
 * 16) " her greatest achievement as a poet of inwardness is her brilliant diamond-hard language
 * 17) her imagination lead her to crossing the bridge in the literature world.
 * 18) she devoted a lot of her poetry to finding her faith and spirituality
 * 19) her most popular theme was GOD, but unlike most poets, she was questioning and challenging him.
 * 20) Dickinson used alot of literary terms like personification and metaphors.