Scan barcode
A review by milandeep
Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
4.0
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
The poems and letters of Emily Dickinson transported me back to the nineteenth century America, an era I like to read about because I admire another couple of people from this time. She became reclusive later in her life but her letters clearly show that she enjoyed her youth with her friends and family and always looked forward to meet them. Her poems are mostly short and can be read over again and again. Her writing is quite unconventional, her poems almost sound like ballads. They show her love of nature, her fascination with death ("I felt a Funeral, in my Brain") and musings about God. I think her withdrawal from society was not a retreat from life but a way to take control of her own life after a family scandal.
She was labelled as an 'old-fashioned spinster' which doesn't seems to be the case. Her letters show her feelings and desires which are not very obvious by the myth created around her. Her family fought for her legacy after her death and discovery of her copious poems and they wanted to create a certain image of her and were successful to a large extent. Though she never left what she always called "my father's house", I think she lived the way she wanted to live - pouring the mystery of her life in her writings and becoming immortal.
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
The poems and letters of Emily Dickinson transported me back to the nineteenth century America, an era I like to read about because I admire another couple of people from this time. She became reclusive later in her life but her letters clearly show that she enjoyed her youth with her friends and family and always looked forward to meet them. Her poems are mostly short and can be read over again and again. Her writing is quite unconventional, her poems almost sound like ballads. They show her love of nature, her fascination with death ("I felt a Funeral, in my Brain") and musings about God. I think her withdrawal from society was not a retreat from life but a way to take control of her own life after a family scandal.
She was labelled as an 'old-fashioned spinster' which doesn't seems to be the case. Her letters show her feelings and desires which are not very obvious by the myth created around her. Her family fought for her legacy after her death and discovery of her copious poems and they wanted to create a certain image of her and were successful to a large extent. Though she never left what she always called "my father's house", I think she lived the way she wanted to live - pouring the mystery of her life in her writings and becoming immortal.