This week’s campus celebrity has made quite a name for herself. In fact, she has helped put our little town on the map. Most of you have heard of Emily Dickinson. You probably read her poetry in middle school. You also know that her house is practically on-campus, and you’ve even told yourself that “someday” you’ll stop by and check it out. But what you might not know is that Emily Dickinson was an emo, tortured soul just like you probably were at some point in your life, be it sixth grade or tenth grade. When Emily’s second cousin Sophia Holland died of typhus when Emily was just fourteen, she was traumatized. This perhaps in part inspired her to write numerous poems about death, such as the cheery poem “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”:
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm. (Excerpt from “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”.)
Emily also wrote a lot of love poems, raising questions about who the objects of these poems could be. Several of her male friends from her teenage years and young adulthood are suspects, among them two Amherst College students, Henry Vaughn Emmons and George Gould. Emily also developed a close friendship (“friendship”?) with the young principle at her high school, Amherst Academy. One of her love poems, “If You Were Coming in the Fall”, resonates with anyone who has ever been in a long distance relationship:
If you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls. (Excerpt from If You Were Coming in the Fall”.)
Emily had a romantic relationship later in life with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, a family friend who frequently visited the Dickinson house. However, she never married, thus serving as an inspiration for all us single ladies with more important things to occupy our time (like poetry).
Emily certainly had her eccentricities. In her later years, she dressed only in white. She was also very protective of her poetry. She kept it hidden in a lock box. As she grew older, she withdrew from society, and spent her time holed up in her house in Amherst writing. Today, people believe she may have suffered from agoraphobia and epilepsy.
Despite the whole bit about living in seclusion, Emily is a great example of a single woman who was incredibly successful. So shut yourself up in your room and starting writing tortured soul poetry!
Sources:
http://www.shortpoems.org/emily_dickinson/fly_buzz_when_died.html
http://users.telenet.be/gaston.d.haese/dickinson_love.html
http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/love_life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson