EMILY DICKINSON'S GARDEN: A STUDY OF HER NATURE POETRY
Abstract
Emily Dickinson's voice comes to us from the mid-nineteenth century, but her poems are as fresh as the day she wrote them. The reader is able easily to imagine her wandering through her garden watching a bird, observing a sunset, or enjoying a lovely summer day. Compared with her poetry, her life is relatively unimportant. Although the facts of her secluded life in Amherst, Massachusetts are known, a mysterious aura still hangs over certain parts of it, and undoubtedly always will. What is left to us is her mind, a mind vibrantly conscious of its surroundings. Miss Dickinson spent many solitary hours recording in her poetry her mind's varied responses. This paper will attempt to explore her inner reaction to nature as she lived her quiet and uneventful outer life.