Emily Dickinson has come to be regarded as one of the quintessential poets of 19th century America. A very private poet with a very quiet and reclusive life, her poetry was published posthumously and immediately found a wide audience.
While she echoed the romantic natural themes of her times, her style was much more free and irregular, causing many to criticize her and editors to "correct" her. In the early 20th century, when poetic style had become much looser, new audiences learned to appreciate her work. Here collected are many of her most contemplative, most rebellious, and "dark" works, expressing her frustrations with the behavioral confines of her times, and the confines of being human and unknowing of eternity. (Summary by Becky Miller)
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Chapters
- Chapter 1
Soul selects her own society, The
00:59 - Chapter 2
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
01:02 - Chapter 3
Hope is the thing with feathers
00:50 - Chapter 4
I never hear the word “escape"
00:35 - Chapter 5
There is no frigate like a book
00:37 - Chapter 6
Because I could not stop for Death
01:13 - Chapter 7
Of all the sounds despatched abroad
01:13 - Chapter 8
Success is counted sweetest
00:42 - Chapter 9
If I can stop one heart from breaking
00:34 - Chapter 10
To fight aloud is very brave
00:46 - Chapter 11
Pain has an element of blank
00:36 - Chapter 12
I can wade grief
00:51 - Chapter 13
For each ecstatic instant
00:39 - Chapter 14
I meant to have but modest needs
01:29 - Chapter 15
Thought went up my mind to-day, A
00:48 - Chapter 16
Is Heaven a physician?
00:33 - Chapter 17
Poor torn heart, a tattered heart, A
00:58 - Chapter 18
I should have been too glad
01:21 - Chapter 19
Each life converges to some centre
01:01 - Chapter 20
My life closed twice before its close
00:42 - Chapter 21
I felt a cleavage in my mind
00:45 - Chapter 22
If recollecting were forgetting
00:38 - Chapter 23
Brain is wider than the sky, The
00:58 - Chapter 24
Softened by Time’s consummate plush
00:49 - Chapter 25
I had no time to hate
00:21