Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of the local college. He also served in Congress. Dickinson's mother, whose name was also Emily, was a cold, religious, hard-working housewife, who suffered from depression. Her relationship with her daughter was distant. Later Dickinson wrote in a letter, that she never had a mother. Dickinson was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48). Around 1850 she started to compose poems - "Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine, / Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!" she said in her earliest known poem, dated March 4, 1850. It was published in Springfield Daily Republican in 1852. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the metre of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language. From c.1858 Dickinson assembled many of her poems in packets of 'fascicles', which she bound herself with needle and thread. A selection of these poems appeared in 1890. In 1862 Dickinson started her life long correspondence and friendship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), a writer and reformer, who commanded during the Civil War the first troop of African-American soldiers. Higginson later published Army Life in a Black Regiment in 1870. On of the four poems he received from Dickinson was the famous 'Safe in their Alabaster Chambers.' My Life Closed Twice Before Its CloseMy life closed twice before its close--A paradox is a statement which contains apparently opposing or incongrouselements which, when read together, turn out to make sense. The first lineis paradoxical in that there are separate meanings for the words "closed"and "close" -- Dickinson tells of having suffered 2 great losses, somonumental as to be comparable to death. She wonders if another suchdevastating event awaits her in the future. There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, Such Houses have—alway -- The Neighbors rustle in and out -- The Doctor—drives away -- Somebody flings a Mattress out -- They wonder if it died—on that --

Death and Emily Dickinson Death is certain in life. No individual is guaranteed to live forever, at least on earth; therefore, death as well as immortality is a concern to every individual, including Emily Dickinson. She as well as many other writers creates images of death in their writings. Death poses many questions: Does the soul survive death? Do people become extinct? What is death's purpose? No individual can really know the answers to these questions until death is experienced for oneself. Dickinson wrote about death in more than five hundred different poems. Her poems about death generally fall into three categories: physical, personified, and social (Ervin).The poem "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" falls under Dickinson's first category. It discusses a lady lying on her death bed. It allows the reader see the narrator's last thoughts before her physical death. Dickinson wrote: "I heard a fly buzz when I died; the stillness round my form was like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storm" (Wolff 225). The stillness in the room where she was dying contrasts with the buzzing of a fly. The narrator was being watched by mourners that, too, were silent and still. They knew "the king" (death) was about to take her away. Dic The speaker in Dickinson's poem is noticeably outside the main action of the poem. The first line makes that clear: "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House." Dickinson creates a patchwork story that the reader and speaker create through Dickinson's poem, based on outside clues and speculation. In Dickinson's poem, each stanza has a central focus; the focus is an action or an image, each one providing more certainty to the belief that there has been a death. These images and actions lead up to the eventual, haunting realization that there will be a funeral procession.

Dickinson also cleverly plays with words, puns, and sound associations. The attitude and emphasis of her poem comes as the poem builds, surprising offering no comfort on the subject of death at the end.In Dickinson's poem, the death seems to have just occurred, perhaps an hour or two-at the very least "As lately as Today." In Dickinson's poem, the actions of the characters appear to be the more immediate concerns of postmortem-airing out the house, discarding the mattress of the deceased, etc.Dickinson's poem is somber. The very list of characters that come and go and "hurry by" the death house is something not