Emily Dickinson the Writer Whose Work I

Emily Dickinson

The writer whose work I admire and most influences my work is Emily Dickinson. She was a reclusive person, having returned from school at age 18 and from that point on, spending most of her time in her home by herself. There have been many hypotheses about Emily having an unidentified lover, but none have been proven. Her poems, however, are filled with the longing, love, passion, loss and depression.

Her poem "In Vain" is a poem about love. She says "and were you saved, and I condemned to be where you were not, that self were hell to me" (Dickinson 29). This poem is all about how she feels about being apart from the one she loves. She mentions how they must stay apart and have unsatisfying communications, but she prefers something to nothing. Her love is so great that to be apart is hell for her. Passion is expressed in the poem "Wild Nights." The lines "Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury" (Wild Nights 5), are clearly her feelings of passion and rapture for the recipient of her poem. She is unrepressed in her expressions in this poem. There is no reserve in this poem.

The themes of loss, death and hopeless are found in many of Emily Dickinson's poems. The poem, "Inner World" is an example of how depression and hopelessness is expressed. Dickinson says "Pain has an element of blank; it can recollect when it began, or if there was a time when it was not." (Dickinson 22). The pain in this poem is intractable and the reader can feel the author's hopelessness and depression. The themes of death, nature pain, separation, loss, passion, and love are throughout Emily Dickinson's poetry.