{"id":4517,"date":"2015-01-06T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T14:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=4517"},"modified":"2014-10-31T02:43:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T06:43:29","slug":"emily-dickinson-a-famous-american-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/emily-dickinson-a-famous-american-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Dickinson: A famous American writer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"An<\/a>

Image arrangement by lynn Dombrowski on Flickr.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, I would like to introduce you to a famous American writer and one of her poems. Emily Dickinson was poet who lived a solitary and introverted life (introverted = inward focused), but who wrote innovated and distinctive poems. Here is her story.<\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson\u2019s family was well off (well off = successful) and able to send her to a good school, but in her teenage years she stopped attending school. At that time and for most of the rest of her life, she was frequently ill and suffered from depression. From an early age, people who knew Dickinson thought she was different or odd.\u00a0 She was known for always wearing white colored clothing and not liking to be around other people. She spent much of her time in her room, in her family\u2019s home, even as an adult.\u00a0 She lived in her family\u2019s home all of her adult life.<\/p>\n

Dickinson began writing poetry as a teenager, but she was not a famous poet during her lifetime. In addition to writing poetry she wrote letters to a few close friends on a regular basis. It is partly from those letters that we now know about the details of her life.\u00a0 Although only a few of Dickinson\u2019s poems were published during her lifetime, she wrote close to 1800 poems in total!\u00a0 Her writing style was very unique. It was especially different from other poetry written during the 1800\u2019s.\u00a0 Her poems were written with short lines (or sentences), and capitalization, and punctuation that are not normal for English grammar. These are some of the reasons many of her poems were not published during her life – because they were so different.\u00a0 Her poems, which were published while she was alive, were usually changed by the publisher to look more like other popular poems of the time. The topics of Dickinson\u2019s poems were also controversial; most of her poems were about death and immortality, although some were about nature.<\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson died in 1886, she never married, and had no children.\u00a0 After her death, her sister discovered all of her unpublished poems and shared them with others.\u00a0 The first collection of Dickinson\u2019s poetry was published in 1890, but it was not until 1955 that the first collection of her poems was publish unchanged or unedited.<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/a>

Image by Michael Dolan on Flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, Emily Dickinson\u2019s poems are considered some of the best of all American poets.\u00a0 Here is one of her most famous poems.<\/p>\n

Hope is the Thing with Feathers<\/strong> by Emily Dickinson
\n\u201cHope\u201d is the thing with feathers<\/em>
\nThat perches* in the soul \u00a0<\/em>
\nAnd sings the tune without the words<\/em>
\nAnd never stops at all,<\/em>
\nAnd sweetest in the gale* is heard;<\/em>
\nAnd sore must be the storm<\/em>
\nThat could abash* the little bird<\/em>
\nThat kept so many warm.<\/em>
\nI\u2019ve heard it in the chilliest* land<\/em>
\nAnd on the strangest sea,<\/em>
\nYet never, in extremity*,<\/em>
\nIt asked a crumb of me.<\/em><\/p>\n

*to perch = to sit
\n*gale= a strong wind
\n*abash = embarrass
\n*chilliest = very cold
\n*extremity = the most extreme point<\/p>\n

Here is what this poem means:
\nIn this poem \u201chope\u201d is described as a bird (a thing with feathers) that lives in the soul. It is in the soul that the bird (or hope) is always singing. The bird\u2019s songs are said to be nicest in a storm (in the gale). The bird (or hope) is said to be heard even in the darkest, coldest, and strangest times.\u00a0 And no matter how bad things get the bird never asks for anything (not even a crumb).<\/p>\n

If you like this poem I recommend you look up others by Emily Dickinson, one of America\u2019s greatest poets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"Book

Today, I would like to introduce you to a famous American writer and one of her poems. Emily Dickinson was poet who lived a solitary and introverted life (introverted = inward focused), but who wrote innovated and distinctive poems. Here is her story. Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":4519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[333540,333541,333542,6486],"class_list":["post-4517","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-emily-dickinson","tag-famous-american-poet","tag-female-poet","tag-poem"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4521,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517\/revisions\/4521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}