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Influences On Emily Dickinson's Poetry

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Introduction
Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. A close scrutiny of her life reveals that she spent her life in seclusion and never had many friends or associates. Yet, the few with whom she established good relationships had a lasting influence on her life as well as her work. The one who made such an influence in her life was the Reverend Charles Wadsworth whom she called “my closest earthly friend.”
The three major influences on her poetry were the 17th century Metaphysical poets in England, the Bible and her upbringing in a Puritan family. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrette Browning and John Keats. It is amazing that not more than a dozen of her poems were published during her life time though she wrote close to or more than 1800 poems. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
What keeps Dickinson foremost on the firmament of poetry is her writing technique which is unique and is different from others. She wrote her poems at the tail end of the Romantic period and yet she was influenced by some of the ideals of Romanticism which find expression in her poems on Nature. …show more content…

The soul selects its own companions and never allows anyone against its conscience. This abstract idea is beautifully conjured up in concrete images such as ‘shutting the door’. The closing of the door is so uncompromising that even the chariots, an emperor and an ample nation cannot persuade her. This idea is further heightened in the last line where she emphasizes on the ‘One’ who is chosen. This ‘One” may be a friend who was very dear to her like Rev. Wadsworth or Jesus. No doubt there is complexity and ambiguity in the poem. But the moment this complexity and ambiguity is unearthed, the reader’s soul dances with

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I believe this is due to her loneliness and solitude throughout her 20’s and 30’s (Emily Dickinson's Biography). It also was probably an effect of the losses in her life and the time period she was in being rather stagnate compared to society today ( Garcia, Emily Dickinson). Dickinson likely was depressed and found little satisfaction in anything outside of literature. She likely found that she could excel in writing and put fourth much energy towards it. Literature became Dickinson’s life.

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Another literary device that Dickinson uses in this poem is satire. Satire, in literature, is the making fun of a human character flaw or some type of human weakness. She uses satire to point out the flaws in society such as their need to talk and go on about the smallest and most unimportant details even if they know that the person which they are talking to does not really care. She states that it must be boring to be one of the “somebody’s”, with all the noise and attention that they receive directing what they do. She seems to be making fun of the” somebody’s” for trying to fit into a society that only cares about their own individual images.

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