The VanGogh of Poetry

Emily Dickinson was a poet

Though none did know it

Actually, most of the townspeople of Amherst, Massachusetts knew of Emily's poetry writing. But only ten of her 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. And those few were altered to meet 19th century norms. She was also an excellent gardener and would send little gifts of flowers with a poem attached to friends and neighbors. "They valued the posy more than the poem." Too bad. Had they preserved those scraps, Antiques Roadshow would be telling their descendents to insure them for $25,000.

Emily was born on December 10, 1830. She had an older brother and a younger sister and the three remained close throughout Emily's life. Her father, an Amherst lawyer, made sure she had an unusually good education for a girl at the time. From an early age Emily lost loved ones to diseases such as typhoid fever and tuberculosis. The back of her home overlooked a cemetery and she took an early interest in death.

After high school, she attended Mount Holyoke College, but left after few months, probably due to homesickness. She occupied herself with household duties and took over baking for the family. Amherst was then a growing college town and Emily attended numerous social events.

Emily was not a religious person, but was influenced by her reading of the Bible. She also loved the poets Wordsworth, Longfellow, and especially Shakespeare. Emily would fall into depression whenever one of her friends was carried off, but was sustained throughout her life by her friendship with her brother's wife, Susan Gilbert. Even though they lived next to each other, they carried on an intense correspondence. Her relationship with Susan is considered by modern scholars to be the great romance of Emily's life.

Her only real jaunt away from home was a five week trip to Washington and Philadelphia with her mother and sister when she was twenty-five. Back home her mother began a thirty year decline and Emily took it upon herself to care for her mother. As the years went by, Emily began to seclude herself at home, leaving the house only when absolutely necessary. If someone came to the house on business, she would speak to them through a door. She worked on her poetry, squirreling away over 800 poems in little homemade notebooks which were not discovered until after her death.

She sent off several of her poems to a well-known writer and activist for women's rights. He recognize her genius, but edited the poems to fit the contemporary style of writing. While Emily took up with her brother Austin's wife Susan, Austin took up with a young faculty wife from Amherst college named Mabel Todd.

Emily's father, to whom she was close, died when she was 43. She did not attend the funeral, though it was in her own home. She listened through a half opened door. Her mother lingered another eight years, requiring more and more care. She stopped writing poetry. She herself died of kidney disease on this day in 1886. She was 56.

Her brother's lover, Mabel Todd, had never met Emily but was intrigued by her. She was asked immediately after Emily's death to help with publication of the poems. A feud ensued and the poems were divided. Mabel Todd published what she had in 1890. As usual, they were altered to meet contemporary standards.  Susan and Austin's daughter published a second set of poems a few years later. The first complete edition, with the poems printed as Emily had written them, did not appear until 1955. In 1981 the stash of poems she had hidden away were published.

It took decades before the world caught up with Emily's "modern" style. Now scholars spend entire careers studying her poems. And why not?

I taste a liquor never brewed -

From Tankards scooped in Pearl -

Not all the Vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air - am I -

And Debauchee of Dew -

Reeling - thro endless summer days -

From inns of Molten Blue -

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee 

Out of the Foxglove's door -

When Butterflies - renounce their "drams" -

I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -

And Saints - to windows run -

To see the little Tippler

Leaning against the - Sun -