EMILY DICKINSONS POETRY: SOME CHARACTERISTICS AND THEMES

The aim of this paper is to identify some characteristics of Emily Dickinsons poetry as well as the
addressed themes. For this purpose, as a first step, they are going to be shown the most relevant
aspects of Emily Dickinsons life; in the second place, they are going to be analyzed a few poems or
fragments in order to recognize some of their thematic and formal aspects. Finally, it is going to be
drawn pertinent conclusions.

As it was said before next it is present a brief biography of the writer. Emily Dickinson was a nineteenth
century poetess in New England. She was born in Massachusetts in 1830 in the bosom of a well-off
and puritan family, she was educated in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary an institution with a religious
focus, however, she was against some religious practices as read the bible, attend mass every Sunday
and pray every hour. Even though she was puritan, she did not share the puritans life style and their
practices, as a result, she quitted her studies and stopped going to church since the age of seventeen.
At that time, about 1850 she started to write poetry, years later she decided to shut herself away in her
house.

Dickinsons poetry style was characterize for being ahistorical and ahead of her time considering that
her writing foreshadows aesthetic modes of poetry in nineteenth century. In the same way, Dickinsons
poetry thematic took into consideration individual existence meaning in the universe, foreseeing
twentieth century preoccupations as womens rights, the oppression of the Indian and poor peoples
plight (Dobson, 1989, p. xi). Her poetry also reflect her thoughts about the puritan lifestyle and the
importance of being loyal to her own duties, as it sees in the poem number 324:

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -

I keep it, staying at Home -
With a Bobolink for a Chorister -
And an Orchard, for a Dome

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice -

I just wear mi Wings -
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton - sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman

And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last -
Im going, all along.
In this poem Dickinson evinces her rejection of going church, as it was proper for puritans. She
criticizes the fact of people attending mass because she thinks their actions were not consistent with
their thought, for this reason in the first stanza she expresses her preference of staying at home instead
than in church: Some keep the Sabbath going to Church I keep it, staying at Home-; she also admits
that is better to hear the singing of a bird that the one which comes from the chorister With a Bobolink
for a Chorister -; finally, she states that she enjoys the liberty of being among fruit trees rather than
inside a building And an Orchard, for a Dome .

In the second stanza, Dickinson makes an allusion to liberty again, but this time related to clothing, she
creates an analogy by saying: Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice- I just wear mi Wings-, this two
phrases could be understood to mean that the fact of wearing Surplice (white robe worn by clergy)
represent a tie which restrains peoples actions and thoughts. That is why Dickinson alludes the
important of liberty in her life (I just wear mi Wings), meaning that she does not want ties in her life.

As evidenced by the above, Dickinsons life and thought were very influential aspects on her
compositions, as well as the religious practices. Even thought, she was a faithful woman, she practiced
puritanism in her own way rejecting most of the traditions and beliefs of puritans because of the
absence of values, making more significant the essence of human being rather than materialism.

Regarding Dickinsons poetry style and according to Fernandez (2001:38) her poetry tend to create
syntactical and semantical ambiguity by comparing or describing two different persons (as in 324 poem
when she compares the Bobolink with the Chorister or the Orchard with the Dome). On top of that and
in accordance with C. Plagia (1990:624), Dickinsons poetry is characterize by summary of words and
the ellipsis (as quoted in Fernandez, 2010:38). For this reason, it is common that Dickinsons poems
focus on just some words in order to concentrate the attention in a specifics elements. It is important to
remark that she also uses some other elements as capitalization and dashes to emphasize the essence
of some words in her poems.

As pointed out by Byron (2000:76), Dickinsons poetry has four relevant aspects:

1. Compression of the language use: it means that she omits words as verbs, phrases and
auxiliary verbs, besides she does not follow the grammatical rules.
2. Poetic language specific and visual: as she always suggest images for the reader by using
dashes and capitalizations.
3. Use of terms in unexpected contexts: this words are presented as isolated entities which reject
the assumption of a subordinate position inside the poem.
4. Use of spontaneous speech: the use of repetitions, ellipses and elements of the spoken
language represent the importance that Dickinson bestows to oral language.
Taking into considerations the elements described before, it is possible to point out that the most
significant characteristics of Dickinsons style were the ellipsis, the capitalizations and the use of
dashes. This elements were representative not only because they focused attention on the vision of the
poem but also they highlight the meaning of some word. In case of dashes, they were used as a
punctuation marks to separate a word in the poem in order to impose some emotional charge or
emphasize the important of that word or the poem. A single example of this is in the third stanza of the
poem I dwell in possibility:

Of Visitors the fairest

For Occupation This
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise

In the first two lines, she encloses in dashes the words the fairest and This to emphasize, in the
first line, that the visitors could not be any person but the ones that follow that specific characteristic;
and in the second, it remarks that it is a special and not an ordinary place. As dashes, capitalization
plays an important role in Dickinsons poetry and they have also an emphatic function. Following the
same example as before, in the words Visitor, Occupation and Paradise, it is confer a special attribute.
The visitors are specific people (the fairest), the occupation is a precise place and the paradise is a
very special place that can be reach only by some people.

Added to the formal characteristics, Dickinsons thematic were very particular too, the main focus of her
poetry was nature and death. She included into her poems natural elements and showed respect for
the nature, as in poem 324, in which she expressed the clam that is nature transfers her. Nature is very
important because through it individuals can find spiritually and inner life. Other remarkable was death,
BYRON, J. (2000), Emily Dickinson. Selected poems. London. Ed. Longman.