Blog 4 Emily Dickinson Poems & Sexuality

 

Emily Dickinson was somewhat of a homebody. With that in mind how did she create such beautiful poems and so many at that. I mean most writers take from experience. So what did Dickinson take from? In many of her poems it seems like she just looked out her room window and wrote whatever she was feeling at the moment. There were so many of her poems so obviously thy all didn't get titles. I think that was what I liked about the poems I did read from her. Every time I started one I really didn't know what I was getting into. So I didn't have this pre-conceived judgment about what the poem was about. Making each one more interesting to me because I really had to pay attention to the words to know what it was about.

When I typed Emily Dickinson's name into google the one thing that came up other than her beautiful poetry was her questionable sexuality. Her letter to Susan Gilbert in 1852 sounds like a letter one would write to their significant other.

"I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away — I miss my biggest heart; my own goes wandering round, and calls for Susie — Friends are too dear to sunder, Oh they are far too few, and how soon they will go away where you and I cannot find them, don’t let us forget these things, for their remembrance now will save us many an anguish when it is too late to love them! Susie, forgive me Darling, for every word I say — my heart is full of you, none other than you is in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me."

I mean lesbihonest she wants this women. It doesn't like a letter to a friend, even thought she says right in the letter that "Friends are to dear to sunder". By saying this she may be covering up her feelings for Susan. After reading this I wondered if Dickinson sheltered herself from the outside world because her sexuality was very fluid, and that would not have been accepted during that period of time. Many of her poems like poem 341 make it sound like she in pain because she wants something that she can't have. Once again this could be me reading to much into her sexuality. Women do tend to have more intimate friendships than men.  But I mean come on how can you not read that letter and think about that. She talks about her heart her feelings...her love!