Emily Dickinson and her Poetry

“I find ecstasy in living. Living is enough for me.”  - Emily Dickinson

 

We generally think of the poet Emily Dickinson as a recluse, a woman who did not socialize with others. Yet the quote above seems to indicate that she lived a vibrant life. To find ecstasy in living is quite a remarkable statement. To find wonder and joy in life one has to really be aware, to be ebullient. She once wrote that she felt like she was “struck by lightning every day.”

Many of us go about like dead people walking. We fail to really see the world around us, to hear the sounds of leaves, of bees sucking sweetness from flowers, of birds twittering in trees. We are rarely jarred by the surprises in our paths, of the uniqueness of the people around us. Although Emily rarely left her house, her images are vibrant with life.

Dickinson considered herself a poet of liberty and “the voice of America.” Born in 1830, she was anti-slavery and an advocate of freedom for women. Although she lived during the period of the Civil War and slavery, these events rarely entered her poetry.

Actually, most of Dickinson's poetry was sent to friends and was published only after her death. Her relatives found poems written on scraps of paper all around her house. Her poems are very simple and direct, very poignant and stirring. Although she was not a church-goer, many of her poems have a spiritual air to them. Nature was her church, and it filled her poetry with images of the world around her.

Probably her most famous poem is “I’m Nobody.”

I’m nobody! Who are you?

     Are you nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us! – don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring Bog!