Death and Immortality in Dickinson's Poetry

Death and Immortality in Emily Dickinson's Poems

Emily Dickinson was an American poet whose unique lifestyle and writing have helped to establish her as an important literary figure. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830 and died in the same town she lived her entire life in 1886. During her lifetime, despite her many attempts and multitudinous volumes of poetry written, only seven poems are believed to have been published during her lifetime, "all anonymously and some apparently without her consent. The editors of the periodicals in which her lyrics appeared made significant alterations to them in an attempt to regularize the meter and grammar, thereby discouraging Dickinson from seeking further publication of her verse" ("Emily Dickinson"). A recurring theme in many of Dickinson's poems, which were mostly distributed among her closest friends via personal correspondence, is that of death and immortality. These...
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