Complex, confusing, provocative, intimidating, profound, unorthodox: these are some of the

words that describe the work of Emily Dickinson. No introduction to Dickinsons 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 4734, no. 342a). This visceral, concrete, and
highly personal definition of poetry is the most fitting way to view Dickinsons 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 poems
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. Dickinsons 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. In fact,
some do not teach Dickinsons work because her syntax is often abstruse and puzzling. However,
these are the very qualities that make Dickinsons groundbreaking poetry rewarding. Her letters
and poems provide fresh ways to investigate and understand the emotional, intellectual, and
psychological nature of humanity.

Poetry enabled Dickinson to achieve an equilibrium between personal autonomy and emotional
dependence. Her comprehensive vision and her commitment to circumference, or the inner and
outer experiences that drive the individual, allowed her to accept and celebrate life despite its
dualistic inevitabilities of grief and joy, despair and hope. Dickinson sought connecting patterns in
life rather than metaphysical explanations. Less concerned with what should be than with what
was, she focused her energy on the concrete details of the present moment. Through her writing,
Dickinson expresses anxiety about the uncertainty of life while paradoxically stressing the value
and profound importance of lifes journey. Her moral and artistic vision was essentially holistic,
generative, and comprehensive rather than linear, compartmentalized, and categorical. Dualism,
contradiction, and oxymoron all played critical roles in Dickinsons life and works. Rejecting the
male-centered Victorian worldview that divided flesh and spirit and seeking to explain away lifes
contradictions, Emily Dickinson fostered a more feminine vision of the world. Instead of willful
individualism and an effort to transcend the temporal world, Dickinson evolved a nurturing vision
based on a cyclical flux of interconnected life forms. Dickinson rejected standard dualisms that
divided the world into flesh and spirit, saved and damned, mortal and immortal. She represents
Emersons transparent eyeball that is, someone who embodies lifes fullness and complexity
with complete objectivity and acts as a guide to reveal the world in its harmoniously disparate
fullness. In order to understand life and the complex intricacy of her psyche, Dickinson required
solitude; at the same time, she craved closeness and communion with those she loved. Hers was a
delicate balancing act: to remain both isolated and connected, individual but intimately involved
with others. Poetry gave Dickinson the medium for exploring such tensions. Her poetic style
attempts to capture the conflicts and emotions of the moment; her idiosyncrasies result from her
attempt to find an appropriate form for representing an untethered inner life. Dickinson defied
all poetic rules and as a result created inventive poems that allowed her to capture thoughts and
emotions in dramatic, though often enigmatic, fashion. The Dickinson trademark the dash
breaks lines apart, forcing the reader to pause and reconsider and providing a visible, physical
space for thought. The dashes often invite the reader to fill in the blanks. Dickinsons
unconventional use of punctuation, especially the dash, serves almost as a kind of musical notation
that guides the rhythm of the lines. Her slant rhymes and strange syntax help create a
comprehensive vision of a world that defies regularization, predictability, and order. Instead of
following poetic conventions, Dickinson often purposely avoids regularizing her verse. For
example, in the final line of If Im lost now, Dickinson purposely ignores using an easy rhyme
(thee) as the final word of the poem:

Im banished now you know it
How foreign that can be
Youll know Sir when the Saviors face
Turns so away from you
(P 117, no. 256)

The final you of the poem jars the readers ears, suddenly and forcibly placing the reader in the
position of distance and abandonment from God. Dickinsons irregularity thus serves a poetic
purpose. She often inverted language, omitted auxiliary verbs, used adjectives, verbs, and adverbs
as nouns, and concluded sentences or clauses with verbs in order to disrupt the balance of her lines
and to create abrupt and striking sensations in the reader. That which makes readers feel
uncomfortable Dickinsons use of nouns as verbs, slant rhymes, perplexing meter, ambiguous
speakers works metaphorically to convey the experience of chaos. [T]he inherent chaos of
sense perception, a perception to which Dickinson was committed, is conveyed in the very
language and rhythms of Dickinsons poems; [d]isorder, therefore, is conveyed in Dickinsons
poetry not only imagistically and thematically. It is represented linguistically and visually as
well.3 Embracing the disjunction and contradiction that life involves, Dickinson seeks to re-create
the unpredictable and often jarring rhythms of life.

Dickinsons unusual poetic style was a rebellion against the Victorian tendency to explain and
narrow the world. She distrusted attempts to create easy explanations for the various experiences
of life. Dickinson found wholeness, not by excising the harsh realities of life and looking to a
future of uniform happiness, but by accepting lifes jarring disjunctions as well as its pleasures.