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American Passages: A Literary Survey
Gothic Undercurrents Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
[1617] Anonymous, Emily Dickinson (n.d.), courtesy of Amherst College Library.
Except for a dozen poems, most of Dickinson’s work was not published in her lifetime. She did, however, carefully collect her poems into handmade booklets, or “fascicles,” of about twenty poems each. Her purpose in organizing her poetry this way remains unclear; she may have desired a private archive for retrieving poems she wished to revise, and it has been suggested that the fascicles are organized by theme. Scholars have long been fascinated by this and other mysteries of her intensely private life, including her sexuality: Dickinson never married, and the evidence suggests that she felt some variety of passionate affection for both men and women (especially her sister-in-law, Susan, one of only a few people to whom she privately sent poems). A half-century after her death, the three volumes of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955) and two volumes of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958) appeared.
Teaching Tips
- Have your students sing one of Dickinson’s poems to the tune of a favorite ballad or hymn. For example, “I could not stop for death” works nicely with the tune of “Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Amazing Grace,” or even Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane.” Why does Dickinson use these forms? How does she change or challenge them?
- Focus on the “slant” (indirection and ambiguity) as the ruling trope of Dickinson’s poetry.
Author Questions
- Comprehension: Notice Dickinson’s frequent use of dashes in place of more standard punctuation like commas and periods. Why did she rely so heavily on dashes? How do they affect your experience and understanding of the poems? How would the poems change with different punctuation?
- Context: Unlike many of her contemporaries, Dickinson does not write poems with clear moral or ethical messages. Are her poems trying to “teach” us anything? What seems to be the purpose of these poems? Do they make you feel (and if so, feel how)? Do they make you think (and if so, think what)?
- Context: Dickinson’s most famous poem, #465, draws on the nine-teenth century’s fascination with death-bed scenes in literature. Unusually, however, this scene is described from the point-of-view of the deceased. What exactly does the poem’s narrator experience, both sensuously and psychologically? How does the fly affect the narrator’s experience of death?
- Exploration: What might Dickinson mean when she writes “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” (#1129)? Why is there a danger that Truth will blind us unless it “dazzle[s] gradually”? Why does the narrator refer to children in supporting this thesis?
- Exploration: What, in poem #258, might “internal difference” mean? What are “the Meanings,” and why are they contained in internal difference? Why does the natural experience of a certain winter light provoke reflection on internal difference?
Selected Archive Items
[1617] Anonymous, Emily Dickinson (n.d.),
courtesy of Amherst College Library.
Portrait of Dickinson sitting at table. Until recently, this was the only known image of Dickinson, a notorious recluse who rarely left her lifelong residence in Amherst, Massachusetts.
[2390] Anonymous, Emily Dickinson (n.d.),
courtesy of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Recently discovered photo of Dickinson. Dickinson is often considered the first modernist poet, despite the fact that she wrote most of her poetry decades before the movement began.
[8659] Priscilla Wald, “Dickinson Reading” (2001),
courtesy of Annenberg Media.
Wald, associate professor of English at Duke University, reads Dickinson’s “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
[8662] Priscilla Wald, “Dickinson Reading” (2001),
courtesy of Annenberg Media.
Wald, associate professor of English at Duke University, reads Dickinson’s “I heard a fly buzz.”
[9011] Johnson, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” (n.d.),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, American Memory Collection [CW106920].
The first known copy of the lyrics are dated 1836, around the time of the battle of Santa Ana in Texas. The song is credited to a black soldier; the “yellow rose” is most likely an endearing name for a mulatta woman named Emily West. “Yellow” was a common term for light-skinned mulattos, and women were often referred to as roses or flowers in popular music of the time.
[9016 – not found] John Newton, “Amazing Grace” lyrics (c. 1760-70).
One of the most popular hymns in the English language, the words were written by English pastor John Newton, himself a “saved heathen.” Newton was a vagrant, indentured servant, petty criminal, and slave trader before his religious epiphany.
