Neither the feeling nor the style of Miss Dickinson belongs to the seventeenth century; yet between her and Donne there are remark...able ties. Their religious ideas, their abstractions, are momently toppling from the rational plane to the level of perception. The ideas, in fact, are no longer the impersonal religious symbols created anew in the heat of emotion, that we find in poets like Herbert and Vaughan. They have become, for Donne, the terms of personality; they are mingled with the miscellany of sensation. In Miss Dickinson, as in Donne, we may detect a singularly morbid concern, not for religious truth, but for personal revelation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although there was a great deal of invention in Whitman's revolutionary work, he built upon a foundation that was already clear, d...irect, available, and acceptable: the ordinary language of the "common man," the working man and laborer--the man of the street. Whitman transformed the language with which he began, but he had something to begin with. Dickinson would have found Whitman's call for a "common" language in poetry entirely congenial--even, perhaps, compelling--for he gave formal utterance to many attitudes that lie behind her work; however, she faced a serious challenge in attempting to implement such a proposal. "Direct" language in a woman was always "domestic" language: there were no women of the street (save for prostitutes), no workingwomen or women laborers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You who desired so much--in vain to ask-- Yet fed your hunger like an endless task,... Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest-- Achieved that stillness ultimately best,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is the Hour of Lead-- Remembered, if outlived,... As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow-- First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »