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Emily Dickinson

Timeline (1830 - 1886)

Poems by Emily Dickinson
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Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, poetry, poetry, Christian poetry

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Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, into one of the prominent families of Amherst, Massachusetts. She was educated at Amherst Academy and attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year. During that time an evangelical religious revival was sweeping the country; when the principal asked “all those who wanted to be Christian” to rise from their seats, Emily was the only student who did not stand.

In a letter sent in 1862 to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (poetry editor of The Atlantic and Dickinson's sole literary confidant), she wrote, "I have a Brother and a Sister — My Mother does not care for thought — and Father, too busy with his Briefs — to notice what we do — He buys me many Books — but begs me not to read them — because he fears they joggle the Mind. They [her family] are religious — except me — and address an Eclipse, every morning — whom they call their 'Father.'"

Clearly, Dickinson's spirituality was not a conventional Christianity. Yet poem after poem, beginning in the early 1860s, shows the signs of some deep experience that shook her to the core, and led her to an understanding of “Heaven” as something available to us now as much as in any afterlife. Whether the precipitating event was, as many assert, an erotic crisis, or some other kind of opening, or perhaps most likely a combination of both, the poems themselves stand as an unassailable testament to the experience's effect upon their author.

Following her return home from Mount Holyoke, Dickinson left Amherst only twice (once in 1855 and once, for treatment of an eye condition, in 1864), and for the last fifteen years of her life confined her activities solely to — as she called it — her father's house. In her later years, she dressed entirely in white. yet in spite of this seemingly narrow existence, the 1,776 poems found after her death sewed neatly into pamphlets are models of freedom: freedom of thought, freedom of reference, freedom to take her own path of poetic technique, freedom of feeling. “My business,” stated in another letter, “is Circumference” — and a vast world of imagination, observation, and precisely articulated spiritual and emotional experience is held within the circle of her words.

-- from Women in Praise of the Sacred, by Jane Hirshfield

Emily Dickinson is often thought of as a sexually repressed recluse who wrote powerful poetry. But if you read her poetry deeply, you will see that she was actually a mystic, experiencing genuine ecstatic states. If she had written her poetry in India, Emily Dickinson would be recognized as a great poet-saint, and her poetry would be understood to be an exposition of Yoga. Quite a different perspective!

Poems by Emily Dickinson

	[172] 'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!
	[174] At last, to be identified!
	[214] I taste a liquor never brewed --
	[322] There came a Day at Summeršs full,
	[323] As if I asked a common Alms,
	[324] Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church
	*[365] Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?*
	[388] Take Your Heaven further on --
	[508] I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs--
	[611] I see thee better -- in the Dark --
	[615] Our journey had advanced --
	[624] Forever -- is composed of Nows --
	[642] Me from Myself -- to banish --
	[765] You constituted Time --
	[772] The hallowing of Pain
	[774] It is a lonesome Glee --
	[775] If Blame be my side -- forfeit Me --
	[777] The Loneliness One dare not sound --
	[834] Before He comes we weigh the Time!
	[835] Nature and God -- I neither knew
	[839] Always Mine!
	[840] I cannot buy it -- 'tis not sold --
	[1028] 'Twas my one Glory --
	[1053] It was a quiet way --
	[1055] The Soul should always stand ajar
	[1056] There is a Zone whose even Years
	[1101] Between the form of Life and Life
	[1503] More than the Grave is closed to me --
	[1504] Of whom so dear
	[1507] The Pile of Years is not so high
	[1544] Who has not found the Heaven--below--

Recommended Books

	American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Adrienne Rich, by Wendy Martin Amazon.com
	Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd / Edited by Thomas Wentworth Higginson Amazon.com
	The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson Amazon.com
	Dickinson: Poems: Everyman's Pocket Library, by Emily Dickinson Amazon.com
	Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief: (Library of Religious Biography), by Roger Lundin Amazon.com
	Emily Dickinson: (Radcliffe Biography Series), by Cynthia W Griffin Amazon.com
	Emily Dickinson: Poetry as Prayer, by John Delli-carpini Amazon.com
	Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems, by Emily Dickinson Amazon.com
	Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems (Audio Book), by Mary Woods Amazon.com
	The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell Amazon.com
	My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson, by Alfred Habegger Amazon.com
	Poems and Letters Emily Dickinson (Audio Book), by Julie Harris Amazon.com
	Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield Amazon.com

Related Links:

	The Dickinson Electronic Archives http://www.emilydickinson.org/ On-line resource for writings by Emily Dickinson and other members of the Dickinson family. Some areas are (frustratingly) "access restricted."

Please support the Poetry Chaikhana, as well as the authors and publishers of sacred poetry, by purchasing some of the recommended books through the links on this site. Thank you!

Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

Emily Dickinson

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