The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson
...to withdraw from the world when her father died in 1874, but kept up close contact with her close friends. Emily's seclusion extended even further when several people close to her died including her mother even thought they were not close, and her friends Samuel Bowles, Charles Wadsworth, and Judge Otis Lord, her love. Emily's isolation was completed after the death of her beloved nephew, Thomas Gilbert, in 1883. She cherished the boy very much and his death ultimately affected her life. Emily stopped seeing her friends altogether and only corresponded with them through letters. Friends would come and see Emily once in a while but would have to talk to her through a closed door or around a corner. Emily started to only wear white, old-fashioned dresses. During the last twenty years of her life, Emily lived as a recluse. Emily's bedroom windows were her only openings to the world. She could watch the main road where there was constant traffic or look towards her brother's house, Amherst College, and the town's square with all of its churches, shops, and townspeople coming and going. She could also look over her gardens and the fields beyond. These glimpses of the world from her windows influenced her writing. She saw funeral processions, some of whom were her friends. She also saw the nature of which she wrote about in her poems. Death is obviously seen in most of her poems because she was so familiar with it. For example, in her poem "Because I Could Not Stop For Death," Emily portrays Death as a gentleman taking her for a carriage ride. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immorality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. Other subjects Emily wrote about were life, nature, love, and God. Emily talked about how she knew God existed even though she had not seen him, as in the following poem, "I Never Saw a Moor." 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. Emily Dickinson wrote literature but she also enjoyed reading it as well. She once explained, "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." She read newspapers, poetry, and fiction. She knew the King James Version of the Bible and Shakespeare by heart and loved reading the writings of John Keats, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, and Thomas Carlyle. Emily read women writers with passion such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Helen Hunt Jackson. All of these writers influenced Emily Dickinson's style of writing. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Samuel Bowles especially influenced her writing greatly. Samuel Bowles was a dear friend ...