Reactions to Emily Dickinson

Reading through the packet on the Household Book of Poetry after looking at Dickinson's poems really accentuated for me how innovative and smart her work was.  Some of the criticisms we talked about in class mentioned that it didn't seem like Dickinson had fully mastered the art of rhyming, and that she needed more practice to achieve the level of work that was currently being published.  Meanwhile, the poems sampled in the Household Book seemed a little bit juvenile and almost trivial in comparison to what we've been reading for class.  The biggest impression I got from the poems was one of conformity.  They followed a strict rhyme scheme (which gave the poems their slightly elementary character), and didn't delve into any substantial issues.  The one poem that could have potentially explored a murky, volatile subject - the death of a child in Loss and Gain - instead takes a staunchly religious stance and merely states that people are subject to God's will and that a child dying in innocence can be viewed as a good thing.  Completely ignored are the emotions that a parent would experience after the loss of a child.  It would be a devastating and traumatic event, and the grieving process could span a wide expanse of time.  This fact gets merely a passing mention and the poem ultimately adheres to the Catholic doctrines of the time (something the editor mentions in the preface as one of the collection's goals).  Something also mentioned in the preface is the hope that the book will come off as aesthetically pleasing.  The result, in my opinion, is that the poems included seem insubstantial and lacking in any real message.  Dickinson explored the different possibilities for a poem, she expressed herself honestly and eloquently, and she didn't let outside forces influence her writing.  I think it's too bad that Dickinson wasn't more extensively published in her time and that the work that did get published wasn't widely appreciated.  She clearly had a  lot to say, and her supposedly more advanced contemporaries might have been able to learn something from her.