Dwell in possibility. – Emily Dickinson
On December 10th we celebrate the birthday of Emily Dickinson, American poet. She was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily went to the Amherst Academy for seven years and then to the Holyoke Ladies Seminary School for a year. Emily loved in Amherst with her parents, a sister and a brother. One day, when she was about 32 years old, she just stopped coming out of the house and became a recluse, writing poetry from her bedroom. She remained a recluse until her death in 1886.
Emily Dickinson wrote about life, death, love, immortality, and nature. She often wrote in the first person. Her poems have been described “expressing what was possible but not yet realized.” A few of her poetry that comes to mind are “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” and “Hope is the Thing with Feathers.” Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.
It is said that Emily closeted herself from the world because of unrequited love, others say that she did because she wanted to focus on her poetry. Whatever her reasons were, she wrote close to 1800 poems. Only about ten were published in her lifetime, though, and the rest were discovered by her sister after her death. Lavinia found Emily’s poems bound together as hand-sewn books. Since the discovery of her work, Emily Dickinson’s poetry has been published in three volumes, the first of which appeared in 1890, four years after she died. Here’s one of her quotes that you may like: That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love. – Emily Dickinson. In Italian, it means “Che l’amore è tutto, è tutto ciò che sappiamo dell’amore.”