Student: María Fernanda López (3º B)

Subject: American Literature

Teacher: Mercedes Arana

ESSAY: Poetry by Emily Dickinson

Born in the quiet community of Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830, Emily Dickinson is considered
one of the most important American poets of the nineteenth century not only for her innovative
style but also for the impact of her poems on readers.
Some of her main techniques are the fact that she uses no titles for her poems (they are usually
quoted by the first line), the use of punctuation for special purposes (for instance, dashes that
replace a copulative verb), slant rhyme, irregular metre, the use of rich vocabulary (she includes
lots of words related to the topic dealt with in the poem, for instance in the case of 214) and the
use of effective images created thanks to her power of observation and description. In fact, she
includes lots of images of the physical world in her poems, which show her direct contact with
nature. She likes it, admires it but also respects it and fears it, as is clearly shown in poem 986:

Several of Nature´s People

I know, and they know me-
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality

But perhaps the most characteristic feature of Dickinson´s poetry is the fact that she reflects
on deep matters (love, hope, God, death) by means of everyday elements. That is why one of the
figures of speech this author uses a lot is metaphor. Thus, in poem 254 she describes hope as a
bird; in 214 she describes nature as a liquor that the poet drinks; and poem 657 is an allegory of
poetry (“I dwell in Possibility / A fairer House than Prose”). She includes a lot of meaning in few
words and that makes her a brilliant and creative poet.
She writes about her own private emotions in such a way that she describes the reader´s mind as
well as her own. For that reason her poems are somewhat timeless, since she includes no
historical or social events and can be applied to her own era as well as ours. That is why many of
her poems are comprehensible even on the first reading.
Even though she does not seem to have a clearly defined view towards death and immortality, it
is an issue she is really interested in since it is included in many of her works.

Because I could not stop for Death-

He kindly stopped for me-
The Carriage held but just Ourselves-
And Immortality.
712

In conclusion, we may say that Emily Dickinson´s gift is to make the reader experience naturally
the thoughts and feelings recorded in her poems in a very peculiar style. She simplifies
philosophical and moral truths by associating them with domestic, well-known elements. As some
critics state, “she reverses the usual, she hitches her star to a wagon, transfixing homely daily
phrases for poetic purposes. Such an audacity has seldom invaded poetry with a desire to tell
immortal truths through the medium of a deep sentiment for old habitual things”.