Influences On EMily Dickinson

’s Life Essay, Research Paper

The influences on Emily Dickinson?s writings were friendship, nature, religion, and

mostly her own life and experiences. Dickinson is known for being one of

America?s greatest poets. ?Her poetry reflects her own life and gives an intimate

recollection of her own inspirational moments.?(g3) Most of her poetry was never

meant to be published but since it was, she became very well known for it.

Dickinson did not have contact with very many people in her life, but the

ones she did see a lot had a great impact on her thoughts and poetry. The most

influential of her friends who also offered her a lot of guidance about her life and

poetry was a minister named Charles Wadsworth. They met in Philadelphia and

he quickly became her best friend. ?Wadsworth was an influence because his

orthodox Calvinism acted as a beneficial catalyst to Dickinson?s theoretical

influences.? (d4) He gave her ideas of many different things to write about and to

think about. Wadsworth was also a solitary romantic person that Dickinson could

confide in when writing her poetry. Many people believed that Dickinson had a

great love for Wadsworth even though he was married. Many critics believe that

he was the basis for many of her love poems. When Wadsworth moved to the

west coast, his departure made Dickinson very depressed and heartsick, which

showed in her poems. This may have been the thing that started a period of

depression in Dickinson?s life.

Another person that greatly affected her poems was a women named

Susan Gilbert. Emily wrote many letters to Gilbert which included many of her

greatest poems. They had met in Amherst and instantly became very close

friends and they shared many interests. Dickinson trusted Gilbert completely.

There were even some rumors about Dickinson and Gilbert having an intimate

relationship. Dickinson was very upset when Gilbert became engaged to Austin

Dickinson, Emily Dickinson?s brother. Dickinson and Gilbert lost contact for

almost two years after the marriage. When Gilbert and Austin Dickinson moved

next-door to Emily Dickinson, their correspondence started again.

During the later years of her writing career, death had a large impact on

her poems. ?Death is not mere metaphorical for Dickinson: Its the greatest

subject of her work.?(h7) Some of the deaths that affected her where of her

mother, father, favorite nephew, and her best friend Wadsworth. The mourning

over the people that were the closest to her made her more obsessed with death

and that had a great influence on her poetry. ?She approaches death from the

perspective of a grieving onlooker, attempting to continue life and her own

faith.?(h8) Unfortunately, without the deaths, she never would have written the

poems that are so famous and legendary today.

Dickinson?s Puritan upbringings also had a large affect on her poetry.

Some people believe that her religious beliefs had a great influence on her

writings but other people think that her poetry had become her religion. Her

religion gave way to a young adulthood which her poems later in her life had

absorbed. When Dickinson was a child, she attended church on a weekly basis.

?Her poetry plays endless variations on the protestant hymn maters that she

knew from her youthful experiences in church.? (h4) When reading Dickinson?s

poetry about her religion, the reader begins to understand what Dickinson went

through in church as a child. When she was young, she had learned a lot about

the Book of Revalations. Her father was a very religious man who practiced a

Protestant sect that closely followed the tenets of Puritanism, but she was never

able to practice his faith with complete dedication.

?Dickinson?s imagery and metaphors were drawn from an acute

observation of nature.? (e2) One of Dickinson?s favorite things to do was look at

things in nature. Many of her poems include birds, trees, flowers, weather. She

compares the things in nature to things in her own life by taking a subject matter

for her poems and using all the themes of love, death and compassion. Most of

her poems about nature came from her own observations and thoughts. Nature

only had a small affect on her poems, but some of her greatest works came form

it.

When Dickinson was writing her poems, she did not care about politics,

the civil war, or literary works by other people. The years of the civil was did

coincide with the time of her greatest output of over eight hundred poems, but the

war had no impact on her writings because the works came from inside the poet

instead of what was occurring around the outside of the poet. Instead of being

influenced by poets of her own time, Dickinson was influenced by the

?metaphysical poets of the 17th century.? Some of her own favorite poets include

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keets and Walt Whitman. (g4) Her direc

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