Emily Dickinson Poetry of Pain and Beauty in Heartbreak...

In Emily Dickinsons lifetime, she was an unknown talent (except to a select few she had chosen to share her expressions of life with) that had only seven poems published while she was alive, and the poems that were published were probably all done so without her immediate knowledge or consent (Bloom 12). Her poems show two different sides of her: some an `irreverent little girl and others `a grief-stricken, mature woman (---. 8). When examining poems by Emily Dickinson, you see how the pain in her life and the heartbreak she felt and witnessed contributed to many of the over two thousand poems she wrote during her 56 years of life. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830. She had two siblings: an older brother, Austin and a†¦show more content†¦This is proven by the continuing need and request she made of Thomas Higginson as a mentor and critic of her poems; it can also be seen from the many drafts of letters and poems that were found after her death. Her poem numbered 1212 (`A word is dead / When it is said, / Some say. / I say it just / Begins to live / That day, (Johnson 534-35)) gives some proof that Emily knew her poems could possibly live forever; this could be the reason she requested her sister to burn the poems after her death (---. 5). Emilys actions and choice of clothing (a simple white dress that she wore all year round) were what caused the town gossips to title the middle Dickinson child eccentric and `a bit peculiar (6-7). As one critic has stated about Emily Dickinson, `writing was as necessary to her as breathing, and her poetry was not just what she wrote: it was who she was. Emilys intent in her poetry was to capture the truth of life and human experiences and then retell them in her poems (37). What the gossips considered eccentric and peculiar, the literary world considers evolutionary. Emilys choice of words for the feelings she wanted to express in her poems are sometime untranslatable. The reader can understand the meaning, but trying to find the words to explain the poems is sometimes difficult or even impossible (37-38). It has been said