Some Things That Stay There Be
Reflections on Emily Dickinson
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8894907 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William G Heath (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1987 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 483-494 |
| Publication date | 1987-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras-018-04-02 |
| OpenAlex | W2081956945 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
It is not surprising that one of Emily Dickinson's most stimulating commentators is the contemporary American poet, Adrienne Rich. Dickinson is one of several women in history who have served as important "touchstones" in Rich's own personal odyssey. Her essay, "Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickin- son," speaks with a personal urgency that stems from Rich's need to understand how Dickinson solved the problem of being a woman poet in a patriarchal society, a problem that Rich herself has wrestled with. Dickinson's solution, Rich concludes, lay in consciously arranging her life so as to allow her gifts as a poet the fullest possible expression: "It was a life deliberately organized on her terms."1 Seen in this light, Dickinson ceases to be the eccentric, passive creature she was once thought to be, and stands instead, in Rich's words, "as a practical woman, exercising her gift as she had to, making choices."2
Aesthetics · Art · Expression (computer science · Literature · Power (physics · American and British Literature Analysis · Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |