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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Emily Dickinson’s style is now considered ahead of its time; while her work was unpopular when she wrote, her experimental approach to poetry prompted a resurgence in the study and appreciation of her work many decades later. Despite her use of standardized form and meter—a product of what was available for her to learn from in that era—she uses non-traditional punctuation and syntax, and simple and crystalline word choices. Within this poem and many others, we see an early version of the modern poetry we know today.
Dickinson barely published when she was alive; the small handful of poems that made it into print were often heavily edited to be in line with contemporaneous punctuation, syntax, and poetry rules, removing what was unique to Dickinson as an artist and an individual. During her lifetime, publishers and critics believed Dickinson’s unusual line-level choices came from inexperience; now, after the revived interest in her work from the 1920s onwards, scholars believe her choices were made with precision and vision, heralding the direction poetry would take. Although Dickinson was a contemporary of the poet Walt Whitman, also known for making experimental choices in his work, her gender likely worked against her and prevented her from having a measurable impact on the art form until much later.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson