Emily Dickinson

Poet

EmilyDickinson

"I Am nobody! Who are you?"

Adèle Hoareau - SU

INDEX

3. Emily Dickinson's Poems

1. Emily Dickinson's life

4. Emily Dickinson in Films

2. Emily Dickinson Museum & Manuscripts

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, daguerreotype, c. 1847.Amherst College Archives & Special Collections (Public Domain)

• (born December 10, 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 15, 1886, Amherst)
• Lived a secluded life in her home
• Wrote over 1900 peoms, but only 10 published in her liftetime.
• Never married, although she wrote several love poems.
• Numerous letters and manuscripts were kept
• Her style: Ballads and hymns, experimental verse & rhymes

"Her verse is distinguished by its epigrammatic compression, haunting personal voice, enigmatic brilliance, and lack of high polish."

Habegger, Alfred. "Emily Dickinson". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Dec. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Dickinson.

Emily 's social life

& relationship with Death

Emily lived in in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. Friends : - Susan Gilbert, who later became her sister-in-law. ( ?) - Catherine Scott Turner Anthon ( ?) - Henry Vaughn Emmons (shared her poems) - George Gould ( ?) - Judge Otis Phillips Lord ( ?)

In her youth, she lost friends and relatives (her young cousin Sophia Holland). From the Pleasant Street house, located near the town cemetery. => dominant theme, background and imagery in her writing.

The Homestead, Emily's house in Amherst, Massachussets https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/the-museum/our-site/the-homestead/

Childhood portrait of Emily Dickinson (left) and her siblings, Austin (centre) and Lavinia.Source : Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy

Emily Dickinson Museum & Manuscripts

Emily Dickinson's bedroom source : Emily Dickinson Museum

Emily's bedroom

Visit the Poet's home on the Emily Dickison Museum website.

Emily 's manuscripts

Emily Dickinson'sPoems

Emily Dickinson's bedroom source : Emily Dickinson Museum

Me from Myself – to banish – [642]

I am Nobody, Who are You ?[620]

Me from Myself – to banish –Had I Art –Impregnable my FortressUnto all Heart –But since Myself – assault Me –How have I peaceExcept by subjugatingConsciousness? And since We’re mutual monarch How this beExcept by Abdication –Me – of Me?

I’m Nobody! Who are you?Are you – Nobody – too?Then there’s a pair of us!Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!How dreary – to be – Somebody!How public – like a Frog –To tell one’s name – the livelong June –To an admiring Bog!

The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

[351]

I Felt my Life with both my Hands

I judged my features – jarred my hair –I pushed my dimples by, and waited –If they – twinkled back –Conviction might, of me – I told myself, “Take Courage, Friend –That – was a former time –But we might learn to like the Heaven,As well as our Old Home!”

I felt my life with both my handsTo see if it was there –I held my spirit to the Glass,To prove it possibler –I turned my Being round and roundAnd paused at every poundTo ask the Owner’s name –For doubt, that I should know the Sound –

The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

[479]

Because I could not stop for Death

Or rather – He passed us –The Dews drew quivering and chill –For only Gossamer, my Gown –My Tippet – only Tulle – We paused before a House that seemedA Swelling of the Ground –The Roof was scarcely visible –The Cornice – in the Ground –Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yetFeels shorter than the DayI first surmised the Horses' HeadsWere toward Eternity –

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 hasteAnd I had put awayMy labor and my leisure too,For His Civility– We passed the School, where Children stroveAt Recess – in the Ring –We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –We passed the Setting Sun –

The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -And on the strangest Sea -Yet - never - in Extremity,It asked a crumb - of me.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers [314]

“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 BirdThat kept so many warm -

The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

Emily Dickinson in Films

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2392830/mediaviewer/rm1285464833/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

A Quiet Passion, by Terence Davies

Produced by Roy Boulter and Sol PapadopoulosWritten and directed by Terence davies, with Cynthia Nixon, Emma Bell (as young Dickinson), Jennifer Ehle, Duncan Duff, and Keith Carradine.

"Because I could not stop for Death "

Dickinson, by Alena Amith

Produced for Apple TV, 2019Created, written, and executive produced by Alena Smith and executive produced by Hailee Steinfeld, "Dickinson” stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jane Krakowski, Toby Huss, Anna Baryshnikov, Ella Hunt, and Adrian Blake Enscoe.

SPOILER ALERT Watch the video only once you've watched the series :)

To Make a Prairie [1779]

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,One clover, and a bee.And revery.The revery alone will do,If bees are few.

Cheers to reverie !

A Letter like Immortality

Emily Dickinson

Dickinson wrote her friend James D. Clark to wish him well and thank him for his own letter of condolence upon the death of Mrs. Dickinson. The letter as a form of immortality is an idea the poet held close; she used almost exactly the same sentence in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson thirteen years earlier.

"The Letter from the skies, which accompanied your’s, was indeed a Boon – A Letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend? I hope you may tell us that you are better. Thank you for much kindness. The friend Anguish reveals is the slowest to forget."

Emily Dickinson to James. D. Clark (L788), Late 1882, in The Letters of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 3:751–752.Emily Dickinson to T. W. Higginson (L330), June 1869, in Ibid, 3:460.Courtesy of Amherst College Archives & Special