On April 15, 1862, Thomas Wentworth Higginson received a letter from Emily Dickinson that included four of her poems and asked whether her verses “breathed.” In his Introduction to The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, editor Thomas H. Johnson proclaims this date to be one of the most crucial moments in American literary history. Dickinson was thirty-one years old and at the peak of her creativity. Higginson’s response was not wholly enthusiastic as he didn’t know how to classify her poetry. He found her verses fascinating, but odd, delicate, and decidedly unworthy of publication. By the time she’d written that letter, she’d already written at least 300 poems in her lifetime and had become dedicated to her creations. She renounced fame to create her art her way.
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. She attended college but left after a year due to severe homesickness. Throughout her life, she rarely went out. By the 1860s, she was living in isolation from the social world but maintained several correspondences and spent time with her family. Dickinson lived with her sister Lavinia until her death in 1886. Her brother Austin and his wife lived next door.
The Academy of American Poets describes Dickinson’s poetry as reflecting a sense of loneliness and longing but also conveying inspirational moments or feelings. In fact, her poetry challenged contemporary thought as her poems revealed a woman’s voice speaking out over the din of what had become acceptable for poetry and literature during her time. According to the Academy of American Poets, Dickinson didn’t read Walt Whitman, but the two poets are connected by their innovative styles that founded a unique American poetic voice.
Only a handful of Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime, anonymously. However, after she died, her sister Lavinia found booklets of her poems sewn together that she’d hidden in boxes in a drawer. Almost 1800 poems were uncovered. Dickinson’s handwritten poems were distinctive in their use of punctuation, especially the n-dash marks she used, as well as her use of capitalization. In Johnson’s Introduction to his collection of Dickinson’s poems, he explains how, at first, only some of her poems were selected for publication and were “corrected.” Various editors removed her unusual and varied dashes, replacing them with traditional punctuation, and words were substituted, rhymes manipulated, and metaphors adjusted. The complete collection of her poems wasn’t published until 1955, but this collection returned them to their original form, and included her n-dashes.
Dickinson seemed most adept at conveying a depth of meaning in a few lines, and her dashes and capitalization contributed to this skill. The following poem, #1004 in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Johnson, exemplifies her proficiency for creating an intensity out of a verse that at first seems rather simplistic until one delves deeper:
There is no Silence in the Earth – so silent
As that endured
Which uttered, would discourage Nature
And haunt the World.
What Dickinson may be saying in this poem is that there is no deeper silence kept than that which if spoken would upset or overturn everything previously accepted and leave a lasting mark. Maybe Dickinson thought expressing such a silence wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but sensed how difficult it would be to utter such a silence. This poem may reflect Dickinson’s awareness of the potential of her writing to challenge the poetry of her time and effect revolutionary change in American literature.
She chose to retain her silence, and let her poems speak for her once she was gone. We will never know if she wanted her silence broken. And, we will never know if she would approve of the transformation she spearheaded in American poetry through her innovative style. I wonder if she would feel validated to witness the lasting impression she made in American literary history that continues to shape poetry today.
Thomas H. Johnson, ed., The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, LIttle, Brown and Company, 1961, http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780316184137.htm , hachettebookgroup.com
Academy of American Poets, Emily Dickinson, http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155, poets.org