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Emily Dickinson

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If I can stop one heart from breaking I shall not live in vain.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Virtually unknown in her lifetime, Dickinson has come to be regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the 19th century. Although she wrote (at latest count) 1789 poems, only a few of them were published in her lifetime, all anonymously, and some perhaps without her knowledge.

Quotes

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  • God is sitting here, looking into my very soul to see if I think right thoughts. Yet I am not afraid, for I try to be right and good; and He knows every one of my struggles.
    • Letter to Abiah Root (29 January 1850); Mabel Loomis Todd (ed.) Letters of Emily Dickinson, vol. 1 (Boston: Roberts Bros, 1894) p. 39 [1] [2]
  • Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus passed the house — still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. [...] The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear to-day for the first the river in the tree.
    • Letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland (c. 1857); Letters, vol. 1 (1894) p. 171
  • My friends are my "estate." Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.
    • Letter to Samuel Bowles (August 1858 or 1859); Thomas H. Johnson (ed.) The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958) p. 338, no. 193
  • I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur — and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves — Would this do just as well?
  • If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever 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 ways I know it. Is there any other way?
    • Letter to T. W. Higginson (1870); Letters (1958) p. 474, no. 342a
  • To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.
    • Letter to T. W. Higginson (late 1872); Letters (1958) p. 380, no. 381
  • We turn not older with years, but newer every day.
    • Letter to Louise Norcross (late 1872); Letters (1958) p. 499, no. 379
  • No approximate words in a poem.
    • Quoted by Julia Alvarez in an interview, "By the Book: Julia Alvarez", The New York Times (April 11, 2019) online. A version of this article appeared in print on April 14, 2019, p. 6 of the Sunday Book Review

Poems

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B = Martha Dickinson Bianchi (ed.) The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Co, 1924) · J = Thomas H. Johnson (ed.) The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co, 1960) · Fr = R. W. Franklin (ed.) The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)
  • A Grave – is a restricted Breadth –
    Yet ampler than the Sun –
    And all the Seas He populates
    And lands he looks upon
    To Him who on its small Repose
    Bestows a single Friend –
    Circumference without Relief –
    Or Estimate – or End –
    • A Coffin – is a small Domain (J)
  • A death-blow is a life-blow to some
    Who, till they died, did not alive become;
    Who, had they lived, had died, but when
    They died, vitality begun.
  • After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
    The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
    The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,'
    And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before'?
    • After great pain, a formal feeling comes (Fr)
  • This is the Hour of Lead -
    Remembered, if outlived,
    As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
    First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -
    • After great pain, a formal feeling comes (Fr)
  • Because I could not stop for Death –
    He kindly stopped for me –
    The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
    And Immortality.
    We slowly drove – He knew no haste
    And I had put away
    My labor and my leisure too,
    For His Civility –
  • We passed the School, where Children strove
    At Recess – in the Ring –
    • Because I could not stop for Death (J)
  • Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
    Feels shorter than the Day
    I first surmised the Horses' Heads
    Were toward Eternity –
    • Because I could not stop for Death (J)
  • Bless God, he went as soldiers,
    His musket on his breast;
    Grant, God, he charge the bravest
    Of all the martial blest.
    Please God, might I behold him
    In epauletted white,
    I should not fear the foe then,
    I should not fear the fight.
  • Could Hope inspect her Basis
    Her Craft were done –
    Has a fictitious Charter
    Or it has none –
    Balked in the vastest instance
    But to renew –
    Felled but by one assassin –
    Prosperity –
    • Could Hope inspect her Basis (J)
  • Dreams – are well – but Waking's better,
    If One wake at Morn –
    If One wake at Midnight – better –
    Dreaming – of the Dawn –
    • Dreams – are well – but Waking's better (J)
  • Drowning is not so pitiful
    As the attempt to rise.
    Three times, 'tis said, a sinking man
    Comes up to face the skies,
    And then declines forever
    To that abhorred abode
    Where hope and he part company,—
    For he is grasped of God.
    The Maker’s cordial visage,
    However good to see,
    Is shunned, we must admit it,
    Like an adversity.
  • What fortitude the Soul contains,
    That it can so endure
    The accent of a coming Foot -
    The opening of a Door -
  • Fame is a fickle food
    Upon a shifting plate,
    Whose table once a Guest, but not
    The second time, is set.
    Whose crumbs the crows inspect,
    And with ironic caw
    Flap past it to the Farmer’s corn;
    Men eat of it and die.
  • Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
    She felled—he did not fall—
    Impaled him on her fiercest stakes—
    He neutralized them all.
    She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
    But, when her worst was done,
    And he, unmoved, regarded her,
    Acknowledged him a man.
  • Glee! the great storm is over!
    Four have recovered the land;
    Forty gone down together
    Into the boiling sand.
    Ring, for the scant salvation!
    Toll, for the bonnie souls,—
    Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
    Spinning upon the shoals!
    How they will tell the shipwreck
    When winter shakes the door,
    Till the children ask, "But the forty?
    Did they come back no more?"
    Then a silence suffuses the story,
    And a softness the teller's eye;
    And the children no
    further question,
    And only the waves reply.
  • Heart, we will forget him!
    You and I, to-night!
    You may forget the warmth he gave,
    I will forget the light.
    When you have done, pray tell me,
    That I my thoughts may dim;
    Haste! lest while you're lagging,
    I may remember him!
  • "Hope" is the thing with feathers –
    That perches in the soul –
    And sings the tune without the words –
    And never stops – at all –
    And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
    And sore must be the storm –
    That could abash the little Bird
    That kept so many warm –
    I've heard it in the chillest land –
    And on the strangest Sea –
    Yet – never – in Extremity,
    It asked a crumb – of me.
  • How happy is the little stone
    That rambles in the road alone,
    And doesn't care about careers,
    And exigencies never fears;
    Whose coat of elemental brown
    A passing universe put on;
    And independent as the sun,
    Associates or glows alone,
    Fulfilling absolute decree
    In casual simplicity.
  • I died for Beauty – but was scarce
    Adjusted in the Tomb,
    When One who died for Truth, was lain
    In an adjoining Room –
     He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
    "For Beauty," I replied.
    "And I – for Truth, – Themself are One –
    We Brethren, are", He said –
  • I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
    The Stillness in the Room
    Was like the Stillness in the Air –
    Between the Heaves of Storm –
  • There interposed a Fly –
    With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
    Between the light – and me –
    And then the Windows failed – and then
    I could not see to see –
    • I heard a Fly buzz – when I died (J)
I took my power in my hand
And went against the world;
'Twas not so much as David had,
But I was twice as bold.
  • I never hear the word "escape"
    Without a quicker blood,
    A sudden expectation,
    A flying attitude.
    I never hear of prisons broad
    By soldiers battered down,
    But I tug childish at my bars,—
    Only to fail again!
  • I never saw a moor,
    I never saw the sea;
    Yet know I how the heather looks,
    And what a wave must be.
    I never spoke with God,
    Nor visited in heaven;
    Yet certain am I of the spot
    As if the chart were given.
  • I reason, earth is short,
    And anguish absolute.
    And many hurt;
    But what of that?
    I reason, we could die:
    The best vitality
    Cannot excel decay;
    But what of that?
    I reason that in heaven
    Somehow, it will be even,
    Some new equation given;
    But what of that?
  • I taste a liquor never brewed -
    From Tankards scooped in Pearl -
    Not all the Frankfort Berries
    Yield such an Alcohol!
    Inebriate of air - am I -
    And Debauchee of Dew -
    Reeling - thro' endless summer days -
    From inns of molten Blue -
  • I took my power in my hand
    And went against the world;
    'Twas not so much as David had,
    But I was twice as bold.
    I aimed my pebble, but myself
    Was all the one that fell.
    Was it Goliath was too large,
    Or only I too small?
  • I took one Draught of Life –
    I'll tell you what I paid –
    Precisely an existence –
    The market price, they said.
    • I took one Draught of Life (J)
  • If I can stop one heart from breaking,
    I shall not live in vain;
    If I can ease one life the aching,
    Or cool one pain,
    Or help one fainting robin
    Unto his nest again,
    I shall not live in vain.
  • Immortal is an ample word
    When what we need is by,
    But when it leaves us for a time,
    'Tis a necessity.
    Of heaven above the firmest proof
    We fundamental know,
    Except for its marauding hand,
    It had been heaven below.
  • How dreary – to be – Somebody!
    How public – like a Frog –
    To tell one's name – the livelong June –
    To an admiring Bog!
    • I'm Nobody! Who are you? (J)
      In some editions "June" altered to "day"
  • It makes no difference abroad,
    The seasons fit the same,
    The mornings blossom into noons,
    And split their pods of flame.
    Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
    The brooks brag all the day;
    No blackbird bates his jargoning
    For passing Calvary.
    Auto-da-fé and judgment
    Are nothing to the bee;
    His separation from his rose
    To him seems misery.
  • It might be easier
    To fail with land in sight,
    Than gain my blue peninsula
    To perish of delight.
  • It tossed and tossed,—
    A little brig I knew,—
    O'ertook by blast,
    It spun and spun,
    And groped delirious, for morn.
    It slipped and slipped,
    As one that drunken stepped;
    Its white foot tripped,
    Then dropped from sight.
    Ah, brig, good-night
    To crew and you;
    The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue,
    To break for you.
It's such a little thing to weep,
So short a thing to sigh;
And yet by trades the size of these
We men and women die!
  • Love – thou art Veiled –
    A few – behold thee –
    Smile – and alter – and prattle – and die –
    Bliss – were an Oddity – without thee –
    Nicknamed by God –
    Eternity –
    • Love – thou art high (J)
  • Mine enemy is growing old,—
    I have at last revenge.
    The palate of the hate departs;
    If any would avenge,—
    Let him be quick, the viand flits,
    It is a faded meat.
    Anger as soon as fed is dead;
    'Tis starving makes it fat.
  • More than the Grave is closed to me –
    The Grave and that Eternity
    To which the Grave adheres –
    I cling to nowhere till I fall –
    The Crash of nothing, yet of all –
    How similar appears –
    • More than the Grave is closed to me (J)
  • Much madness is divinest sense
    To a discerning eye;
    Much sense the starkest madness.
    'Tis the majority
    In this, as all, prevails.
    Assent, and you are sane;
    Demur,—you're straightway dangerous,
    And handled with a chain.
  • My life closed twice before its close;
    It yet remains to see
    If Immortality unveil
    A third event to me,
    So huge, so hopeless to conceive
    As these that twice befell.
    Parting is all we know of heaven,
    And all we need of hell.
  • My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
    In Corners – till a Day
    The Owner passed – identified –
    And carried Me away –
    And now We roam in Sovereign Woods –
    And now We hunt the Doe –
    And every time I speak for Him –
    The Mountains straight reply –
    • My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun (J)
  • Nature is what we see,
    The Hill, the Afternoon—
    Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
    Nay—Nature is Heaven.
    Nature is what we hear,
    The Bobolink, the Sea—
    Thunder, the Cricket—
    Nay,—Nature is Harmony.
    Nature is what we know
    But have no art to say,
    So impotent our wisdom is
    To Her simplicity.
  • New feet within my garden go,
    New fingers stir the sod;
    A troubadour upon the elm
    Betrays the solitude.
    New children play upon the green,
    New weary sleep below;
    And still the pensive spring returns,
    And still the punctual snow!
  • No rack can torture me,
    My soul 's at liberty.
    Behind this mortal bone
    There knits a bolder one
    You cannot prick with saw,
    Nor rend with scymitar.
    Two bodies therefore be;
    Bind one, and one will flee.
    The eagle of his nest
    No easier divest
    And gain the sky,
    Than mayest thou,
    Except thyself may be
    Thine enemy;
    Captivity is consciousness,
    So's liberty.
  • Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
    Nor with a Stone –
    A Whip so small you could not see it
    I've known
    To lash the Magic Creature
    Till it fell,
    Yet that Whip's Name
    Too noble then to tell.
    Magnanimous as Bird
    By Boy descried –
    Singing unto the Stone
    Of which it died –
    Shame need not crouch
    In such an Earth as Ours –
    Shame – stand erect –
    The Universe is yours.
  • Our journey had advanced;
    Our feet were almost come
    To that odd fork in Being's road,
    Eternity by term.
    Our pace took sudden awe,
    Our feet reluctant led.
    Before were cities, but between,
    The forest of the dead.
    Retreat was out of hope,—
    Behind, a sealed route,
    Eternity's white flag before,
    And God at every gate.
  • Safe in their Alabaster Chambers -
    Untouched by Morning -
    And untouched by noon -
    Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,
    Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone -
    Grand go the Years,
    In the Crescent above them -
    Worlds scoop their Arcs -
    And Firmaments - row -
    Diadems - drop -
    And Doges surrender -
    Soundless as Dots,
    On a Disk of Snow.
    • Safe in their Alabaster Chambers [third version] (Fr)
  • So proud she was to die
    It made us all ashamed
    That what we cherished, so unknown
    To her desire seemed.
    So satisfied to go
    Where none of us should be,
    Immediately, that anguish stooped
    Almost to jealousy.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
  • God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
    And the sermon is never long,
    So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
    I'm going, all along.
    • Some keep the Sabbath going to Church (J)
  • Surgeons must be very careful
    When they take the knife!
    Underneath their fine incisions
    Stirs the culprit,—Life!
  • The Bustle in a House
    The Morning after Death
    Is solemnest of industries
    Enacted upon Earth -
    The Sweeping up the Heart
    And putting Love away
    We shall not want to use again
    Until Eternity -
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
  • Success is counted sweetest
    By those who ne'er succeed.
    To comprehend a nectar
    Requires a sorest need.
    Not one of all the purple Host
    Who took the Flag today
    Can tell the definition
    So clear of Victory
    As he defeated – dying –
    On whose forbidden ear
    The distant strains of triumph
    Burst agonized and clear!
  • Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
    Success in Circuit lies
    Too bright for our infirm Delight
    The Truth's superb surprise
    As Lightning to the Children eased
    With explanation kind
    The Truth must dazzle gradually
    Or every man be blind –
    • Tell all the Truth but tell it slant (J)
  • The blunder is to estimate,—
    "Eternity is Then,"
    We say, as of a station.
    Meanwhile he is so near,
    He joins me in my ramble,
    Divides abode with me,
    No friend have I that so persists
    As this Eternity.
  • A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came,
    A Wisdom, without Face, or Name,
    A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home
    And so the Night became.
  • The distance that the dead have gone
    Does not at first appear;
    Their coming back seems possible
    For many an ardent year.
    And then, that we have followed them
    We more than half suspect,
    So intimate have we become
    With their dear retrospect.
  • The face we choose to miss,
    Be it but for a day—
    As absent as a hundred years
    When it has rode away.
  • The grass so little has to do,—
    A sphere of simple green,
    With only butterflies to brood,
    And bees to entertain,
    And stir all day to pretty tunes
    The breezes fetch along,
    And hold the sunshine in its lap
    And bow to everything;
    And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
    And make itself so fine,—
    A duchess were too common
    For such a noticing.
    And even when it dies, to pass
    In odors so divine,
    As lowly spices gone to sleep,
    Or amulets of pine.
    And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
    And dream the days away,—
    The grass so little has to do,
    I wish I were a hay!
  • If Aims impel these Astral Ones
    The ones allowed to know
    Know that which makes them as forgot
    As Dawn forgets them – now
  • The pedigree of honey
    Does not concern the bee;
    A clover, any time, to him
    Is aristocracy.
  • I've known her – from an ample nation –
    Choose One –
    Then – close the Valves of her attention –
    Like Stone –
    • The Soul selects her own Society (J)
  • There is a solitude of space,
    A solitude of sea,
    A solitude of death, but these
    Society shall be,
    Compared with that profounder site,
    That polar privacy,
    A Soul admitted to Itself:
    Finite Infinity.
  • There is a word
    Which bears a sword
    Can pierce an armed man.
    It hurls its barbed syllables,—
    At once is mute again.
    But where it fell
    The saved will tell
    On patriotic day,
    Some epauletted brother
    Gave his breath away.
    Wherever runs the breathless sun,
    Wherever roams the day,
    There is its noiseless onset,
    There is its victory!
    Behold the keenest marksman!
    The most accomplished shot!
    Time's sublimest target
    Is a soul "forgot"!
  • There's a certain Slant of light,
    Winter Afternoons -
    That oppresses, like the Heft
    Of Cathedral Tunes -
    Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
    We can find no scar,
    But internal difference -
    Where the Meanings, are -
    • There's a certain Slant of light (Fr)
  • They shut me up in Prose -
    As when a little Girl
    They put me in the Closet -
    Because they liked me "still" -
    Still! Could themself have peeped -
    And seen my Brain - go round -
    They might as wise have lodged a Bird
    For Treason - in the Pound -
    • They shut me up in Prose (Fr)
  • This is my letter to the World
    That never wrote to Me –
    The simple News that Nature told –
    With tender Majesty
    Her Message is committed
    To Hands I cannot see –
    For love of Her – Sweet – countrymen –
    Judge tenderly – of Me
  • To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,
    What must the Midnights – be!
    • To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights (J)
  • Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
    Too sullied for the hell
    To which the law entitled him.
    As nature’s curtain fell
    The one who bore him tottered in,
    For this was woman’s son.
    "'Twas all I had," she stricken gasped;
    Oh, what a livid boon!
  • What Soft – Cherubic Creatures –
    These Gentlewomen are –
    One would as soon assault a Plush –
    Or violate a Star –
    Such Dimity Convictions –
    A Horror so refined
    Of freckled Human Nature –
    Of Deity – ashamed –
  • Who has not found the heaven below
    Will fail of it above.
    God's residence is next to mine,
    His furniture is love.
    • Who has not found the Heaven – below (B)
  • Wild nights - Wild nights!
    Were I with thee
    Wild nights should be
    Our luxury!
    Futile - the winds -
    To a Heart in port -
    Done with the Compass -
    Done with the Chart!
    Rowing in Eden -
    Ah - the Sea!
    Might I but moor - tonight -
    In thee!


Misattributed

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  • Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.
    • Quoted on the web sans source. Not in any published edition of Dickinson's poems. Anthony Hernandez, The Enlightened Savage (2006) – a self-help book – attributes it verbatim to Dave Sim sans source. Compare a similar quote sourced to Sim in Cerebus no. 65 (1984): "Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon."

Quotes about Dickinson

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  • In English, you know who I love, and have translated? Emily Dickinson...I translated Dickinson. It came out in the Nuevo Diario a long time ago, in the beginning of the 1980s. I love her very much.
  • (What is it about Emily Dickinson that moves you?) Her use of language, certainly. Her solitude, as well, and the style of that solitude. There is something very moving and in the best sense funny. She isn't solemn.
    • James Baldwin, 1984 interview, in Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (eds.) Conversations with James Baldwin
  • One who, as a child, knew Emily Dickinson well and loved her much recollects her most vividly as a white, ethereal vision, stepping from her cloistral solitude on to the verandah, daintily unrolling a great length of carpet before her with her foot, strolling down to where the carpet ended among her flowers, then turning back and shutting herself out of the world.
  • Dickinson was a woman of privilege who never left her house, nor had to deal with issues beyond which white dress to wear on a given day.
  • There is another thing about my childhood that is interesting now, in the light of later happenings. I might have said, with Emily Dickinson: "I never saw a moor,/I never saw the sea;/Yet know I how the heather looks,/And what a wave must be." For I never saw the ocean until I went from college to the marine laboratories at Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. Yet as a child I was fascinated by the thought of it. I dreamed about it and wondered what it would look like.
    • Rachel Carson, 1954 speech, in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1998)
  • Friends dislike being apart. Separation, says Emily Dickinson, is all the Hell we need. Each shared moment is precious. And the only ones who can remember the hour of loneliness are those who survive it.
    • Rosario Castellanos, "In Praise of Friendship" (1964) in Another Way to Be: Selected Works of Rosario Castellanos
  • No great poet has written so much bad verse as Emily Dickinson...Her coy and oddly childish poems of nature and female friendship are products of a time when one of the careers open to women was perpetual childhood.
    • Richard Chase, as quoted in Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990) p. 637
  • I'm from the Emily Dickinson and Flannery O'Connor school of writing, where you write about your Amherst backyard or about a farm in Milledgevilk, and then you're actually writing about everything it means to be human.
    • Judith Ortiz Cofer, 2000 interview, in A Poet's Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets (2003)
  • The complexity of women's undergarments
    in nineteenth-century America
    is not to be waved off,
    and I proceeded like a polar explorer
    through clips, clasps, and moorings,
    catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
    sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
    • Billy Collins, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes", st. 5, in Poetry (February 1998) p. 277 [3]
  • There’s no higher entitlement than thinking that you should live forever, when part of the beauty of nature is that even the stars die. That's what Emily Dickinson said: 'That it will never come again/is what makes life so sweet.' I believe that.
  • My mother was the first songwriter I knew; Emily Dickinson was the first poet and my grandmother the first storyteller...From Emily I learned that the immense silences I found within me were navigable by words and metaphor.
  • Her poetry is the diary or autobiography — though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth — of an acute psychologist, a wonderful rhetorician, and one of the most individual writers who ever lived, one of those best able to express experience at its most nearly absolute.
    • Randall Jarrell, "The Year in Poetry", Harper's (October 1955); republished in Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980) [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981, ISBN 0-374-51668-5], p. 244
  • Emily Dickinson is nearly infinite in her expression. She wrote seventeen hundred and seventy-five poems, and they constitute a very rich literature certainly. And she was, God knows, highly imaginative, highly intelligent, highly perceptive, and she had a kind of regard for language that a great writer must have. It was a mystery, a miracle to her. I learned a little something about the mystery and miracle of language by reading her...
    • N. Scott Momaday, 1981 interview, in Matthias Schubnell (ed.) Conversations with N. Scott Momaday (1997)
  • When I visited Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst,
    a lively plump robin was sitting on her step,
    right under the second-story window she would have
    stared out of.
  • Anger has always played a role in poetry...There is much anger in Emily Dickinson, lightly disguised as mockery. "The Bible is an antique volume / Written by faded men," she proclaims.
  • Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility.
  • Emily Dickinson is the female Sade, and her poems are the prison dreams of a self-incarcerated, sadmomasochistic imaginist. When she is rescued from American Studies departments and juxtaposed with Dante and Baudelaire, her barbarities and diabolical acts of will become glaringly apparent. Dickinson inherits through Blake the rape cycle of The Faerie Queene. Blake and Spenser are her allies in helping pagan Coleridge defeat Protestant Wordsworth.
    • Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990) p. 624
  • Dickinson's sentimental feminine poems remain neglected by embarrassed scholars. I would maintain, however, that her poetry is a closed system of sexual reference and that the mawkish poems are designed to dovetail with those of violence and suffering.
    • Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990) p. 637
  • I have a notion that genius knows itself; that Dickinson chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed. It was, moreover, no hermetic retreat, but a seclusion which included a wide range of people, of reading and correspondence. Her sister Vinnie said, "Emily is always looking for the rewarding person." And she found, at various periods, both women and men: her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, Amherst visitors and family friends such as Benjamin Newton, Charles Wadsworth, Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, and his wife; her friends Kate Anthon and Helen Hunt Jackson, the distant but significant figures of Elizabeth Barrett, the Brontës, George Eliot. But she carefully selected her society and controlled the disposal of her time. Not only the "gentlewomen in plush" of Amherst were excluded; Emerson visited next door but she did not go to meet him; she did not travel or receive routine visits; she avoided strangers. Given her vocation, she was neither eccentric nor quaint; she was determined to survive, to use her powers, to practice necessary economies.
  • Emily Dickinson — viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as "partially cracked," by the twentieth century as fey or pathological — has increasingly struck me as a practical woman, exercising her gift as she had to, making choices.
    • Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979)
  • She was always stirred by the existences of women like George Eliot or Elizabeth Barrett, who possessed strength of mind, articulateness, and energy. (She once characterized Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale as "holy" — one suspects she merely meant, "great.")
    • Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979)
  • Emily Dickinson's strictness, sometimes almost a slang of strictness, speaks with an intellectually active, stimulated quick music.
  • Emily Dickinson, whose unappeasable thirst for fame was itself unknown for years after her death, had to fight through her family — "Vesuvius at home" — until a miserable lawsuit and the theft of a manure pile interrupted the posthumous publication of her work, and postponed for forty-nine years what may be her finest book.
    • Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry (1949)
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