Chapter 3 - Works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Complex, confusing, provocative, intimidating, profound, unorthodox: these are some of the words that describe the work of Emily Dickinson. No introduction to Dickinson's work is more appropriate than her own definition of poetry as recorded by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way” (L 473–4, no. 342a). This visceral, concrete, and highly personal definition of poetry is the most fitting way to view Dickinson's own work. Whether a poem is true “poetry” does not depend for Dickinson on its use of meter, rhyme, stanzas, or line length, but on the almost physical sensation created in the reader by the poem's words, the arctic chill in the marrow of the bones or the stunning blow to the mind that the reader experiences in the act of reading. Dickinson's interest in creating such a sensation makes her poetry unorthodox and difficult to understand. Often abandoning conventional poetic standards, Dickinson chose her words for the feeling they create, for their ability to awaken in the reader a specific emotion at the moment described. However, as a result, many readers approaching Dickinson for the first time find themselves overwhelmed and perplexed by her work.
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- The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson , pp. 40 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007