Emily’s Life, Family, and Influences in writing poems
Emily Dickinson was born December 10th, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Amherst was well known as a town for Education. Her family’s Mansion was used for meeting for very important people like Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emily was known as a bright and conscientious student as a young child. She showed that writing came easy to her. Rhyming stories were really easy for her to write. Her father was very strict and wanted to raise his children well Educated and proper. He didn’t allow Emily to bring books from Walt Whitman because they were “too inappropriate” and he didn’t want Emily to read such things. Emily had to sneak some books into her house because her father wouldn’t approve of them. At a young age, she said she wanted to be “the best little girl” but it was difficult because she was so open minded and independent. She was willing to disobey her father so that she could read and write what she wanted to.
Family
She grew up with an older brother named Austin and a younger sister named Lavinia. Her family was well known in Massachusetts. Her father was a lawyer and was treasurer of Amherst College. Her brother eventually took over that place as well. Her grandfather was one of the founders of that College. Her mother was a very timid person. Her sister became the chief housekeeper. She never left home and of course never got married. Susan Gilbert was the sixth person in this family. She married her brother Austin in 1856. Susan was one of Emily’s schoolmate, and a close friend. As time passed Emily saw her and a “pseudo-sister” (false sister). She used to share her writing and poems with Susan but they slowly separated and Emily stopped considering talking to Susan and sharing her stories with her. They didn’t talk since.
Teenage Years
Emily graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847. The year after she graduated she went away from her. This was the longest time she spent away from home. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary but since Emily was so fragile in health she didn’t return but some people say that the Seminary didn’t low her to stay because Dickinson refused to sign an oath professing her faith in Christ. AT seventeen she settled back into her hometown home with her family and decided to turn herself into a housekeeper. This is when she decided to really get into writing poems. She didn’t leave her house for anything in the world.
Early Work
Since Emily was a housekeeper with free time on her hands and nothing much to do she started to write her poems. She would always writ poems but there weren’t any dated before 1858. In this year she started to gather all her poems and started to hand write them. After 1858 she convinced herself that she had a great talent of writing poems so she started to keep the in a box. Carefully stored where she can find and possibly give them to people to read or for a future publisher to read them and publish her work. Dickinson had a hard time publicating her work. It took her up to four years to find someone who would make time and read all of her work. She sent all her poems to her friend Samuel Bowles, an editor of Springfield Republication. He edited two of her five poems; since the other three didn’t have her name or date she wrote them he couldn’t do much with them.
Years of nothing
For years Emily Dickinson couldn’t get more then those two poems published. She would go through an emotional crisis. Thinking all of her work was for nothing. From 1858 to 1866 Dickinson hand wrote more than eleven hundred poems. Rhymes were busting out of her pores. They were coming from every inch of her body. She couldn’t stop writing. Once she was done with one poem she would start with another one. Some poems were short and some were long, as long as sixteen lines of rhymes and weird grammar. She wrote poems about her life, death, nature, but most are about love.
After Death
Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1885 at the age of 55 from Bight’s disease, which is caused by the kidney collapse. Doctors say that the stressful life she had caused it. Even though she had a sad death her poems show that there were parts of her life that were very happy. Once she was dead for a while maybe a month, her sister Vinnie was ordered to burn all of her poems. While Vinnie was looking for the poems, she noticed that there were 1700 poems; Vinnie did not follow the orders she was given and did not throw away her poems. In doing so, she got in contact with a couple people and after many years of Emily trying to get her poems published Vinnie found someone who was willing to publish them. Her poems hit places she would have never thought, such as magazines and newspapers. Her poems published in 1893 for readers of all ages to read and enjoy the hard work she put into them.
“Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him–
Tell him the page I didn’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow-
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.
“Tell him it wasn’t a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him–No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.
“Tell him night finished before we finished
And the old clock kept neighing ‘day!’
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended–
What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow,–happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!”
