Why is Emily Dickenson such a noted poet?

Question

It seems she was a "crack-pot" and many people feel she is difficult to understand.

Answer 1

I like the poems she writes and she led an interesting life. She only published I think 13 or less poems during her lifetime and usually wore white and never left her home or got married (I think she was jilted in her youth). But her poems aren't deep, they're a good read and the mood to them is depressing and yet a little calm. I don't think her poems are too difficult to understand but some are. I think the reason she is so populaur is because her poems are so wonderfully written and her interesting and unique backgroudn as a person.

Answer 2

Dickenson IS difficult to understand. The only way to get a better interpretation of her poems is simply to read a lot of them and learn a little about the woman herself. Also, her poetry is generally considered very ahead of its time, and is nothing like poetry typical of her contemporaries, so it stands out.

Answer 3

I always though of Dickinson as a quaint spinster who wrote poems about nature. I thought of her that way even when I had to read her in college. She is hard to understand. She writes plainly, about simple things, but I always felt I was missing something. Later, someone gave me a book of her complete poems, and read the whole thing, and I became convinced that she is a great poet precisely because she writes so simply, and yet captures the essence of emotions so well with those simple words. You really need to read a lot of her poems before you start to see just how wonderful her writing is. Below is one of my favorites:

After Great Pain

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow--
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go--

This poem really hit home for me after someone very close to me died. It is the best description of what your body and mind go through that I have ever read. The thing that is so powerful about it, to me at least, is that last stanza, and the simple language she uses to describe something we all experience at one time or another. I remember being frozen during the whole week after my loved one died. We all walked around, and did the normal everyday things, but it was like our minds were elsewhere, and our movements were just mechanical. I remember that I felt absolutely nothing. No sadness, no anger, no bewilderment, nothing except the need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I remember standing at the sink, brushing my teeth, and thinking, "Brush the outsides, at an angle to the gumline. Brush the insides, at an angle to the gumline..." It was just mechanical, like being a robot, doing what someone had told me to do. Later, I remember a flood of pain, pain that was so strong it was bewildering. I couldn't do anything. Even the ability to follow habit like a robot had left me. My husband had to tell me when it was time to get up, tell me to shower, tell me to dress. Still later, I started to feel a strange sense of release. It wasn't relief in any way, but it was a realization that the one who died wasn't coming back. When I finally let go, I felt all the emotion I hadn't felt before. I had questions. I worried about the future. I walked around feeling, for the first time in a long time, like I was fully awake. I found myself right smack in the middle of the grieving process. And sometimes it was puzzling to me that I could land there, when I hadn't been aware of the fact that that was where I was headed. It was then, after the real grieving began, that I could look back, and see that I had lived through "The hour of lead".

Give her a try, read as much of her poetry as you can. Her complete works are available online, and I have provided a link below. Even if you never grow to like her poetry, you may grow to understand why she is considered by so many to be an important poet.

http://www.bartleby.com/113/

Answer 4

Read her complete works. They are wonderful. Her language is really simple and beautiful, but her ideas make you stretch your mind. Don't dismiss difficult to understand. Weight lifting is difficult too and challenges the body, her deep, dense ideas challenge your mind. I don't believe all art is equal. She is a prime cut in a world of watered-down gruel.

Answer 5

You know, that's a good question, I myself think she was a unintelligible person and her works are not that "deep", furthermore, people pretend to comprehend her writings thinking they know "exactly" what she is saying (college instructors and other levels of education) that she gets to the soul of a particular subject, BULL, the same can be saying other supposedly "artists": Andy Warhol, Shakespeare, Stanley Kubrick, Basquiat etc., etc., etc.

Answer 6

Because English professors decide who the "noted" writers are, and Dickenson has some qualities they really like:

--She was a feminist, but also feminine and girly too.
--She was introspective.
--She was reclusive.
--She was often depressed.
--She was not famous in her lifetime.

Answer 7

Emily Dickinson was no crackpot poet, and who, in fact, felt she was difficult to understand? I have just read some of her poetry on the net, and, to me, it's great. Go to www.online-literature.com/dickinson/ and read up the facts.

Answer 8

Read five of her poems. Then read them again, and a third time. Then answer your own question.

Answer 9

Read her poetry and decide for yourself.