Dickinson

I've been enjoying Emily Dickinson all summer long.  Slowly and surely wading through her collected works. (By the way, you can get the free ebook at Barnes and Noble's website.)  Her word choices, the way she strings them together like jewels on a ribbon, really grab me.  I find her work full of passion and a lot of feminist insight for the time.

Dickinson wrote quite a bit about death.  She was writing during the American Civil War, the bloodiest time the country had ever seen.  People were confronted with death on a daily basis, and she was brave enough to put her thoughts about it on paper.  She understood that life was fleeting.  She seemed unafraid to meet death.  Morbid, macabre, but also realistic.

She also had some controversial opinions on religion.  She lived in a very rigid, structured religious community but she rejected much of what she saw in her fellow believers.  She found God not just in pews, but in nature, as well.

While many picture her as an old maid writer, she was no prude.  She filled her verse with passion.  Wild Nights is just one example of the abandon with which she loved.  There are many speculations about her love life - the Reverend, and even her sister-in-law - and whatever we may say or conjecture, it is obvious in her writing that she loved deeply and passionately.

Emily Dickinson stands out among all the poets of America, not simply those in the 19th century.  Her words are honest, brutal, and beautiful, and in my opinion, there is much we can learn from them.