75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know by Terry Glaspey

Author:Terry Glaspey [Glaspey, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL013000, BIO018000, ART016000, Christianity and the arts, Artists—Religious life
ISBN: 9781493400461
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

42

The Complete Poems

EMILY DICKINSON

(poems, 1890)

At nineteen, Emily Dickinson was a cheerful and optimistic young woman and an active participant in the polite, sometimes uptight, New England community in which she had been raised. She attended local dinners and dances, and traveled with her congressman father on trips to Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, and New York. But by the time of her death, this once rather conventional young lady had become an almost mythical recluse who dressed almost exclusively in white, rarely left her second-story bedroom, and spent much of her time at her desk, writing poetry and letters to friends.

What had caused the dramatic shift in her life? Some suggest that a devastating disappointment in a relationship drove her inward. Others postulate that she may have suffered from a psychological malady such as agoraphobia. Or perhaps she just discovered that the place where she really found joy was in the confines of her own creative mind and soul. We’ll likely never know for certain, for though her poems and letters might provide hints, they generally obscure as much as they reveal about this wonderful but puzzling poet.

Dickinson embraced her seclusion, finding in her solitude a place where she could be spiritually transported. How she saw the world and what she experienced in her inner life provided the subject matter for her poems. She was extremely prolific during her short life, penning over 1,700 poems and writing enough letters to fill three stout volumes. These letters and poems reveal the woman she had become: a careful observer of the world and of her own self, someone cynical about easy answers to life’s hard questions, a wrestler with God, and a poet who found her own entirely unique way of communicating about life and death, time and eternity, faith and doubt, the simple beauties she saw in nature, and the exquisite sufferings she felt within her innermost self.

In her poems she uses language and grammar with a startling freshness, her word choices often unexpected and layered with levels of meaning. Dickinson constantly surprises with her insights, her observations, and her honesty. It is her inquisitive nature and her highly observant eye that give wings to her words, causing them to soar with such simplicity and ease. We see her watchful eye at work in poems such as “A bird comes down the walk” and “There’s a certain slant of slight,” and we see her playful images and metaphors in poems such as “Hope is the thing with feathers” and “Bring me the sunset in a cup.” These poems are crisply and tightly structured, without the waste of extra words, and therefore are usually quite short, which aids their memorability. Underlying her poetic vision is a childlike joy joined with a deep compassion:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one Life the Aching

Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again

I shall not live in Vain.1

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, Emily Dickinson lived a life that was outwardly uneventful.

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