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    Emily Dickinson: Self-Discipline in the Service of Art
    Emily Dickinson: Self-Discipline in the Service of Art
    Emily Dickinson: Self-Discipline in the Service of Art
    Ebook59 pages1 hour

    Emily Dickinson: Self-Discipline in the Service of Art

    By Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock

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    Emily Dickinson exemplified the virtue of self-discipline. She wrote poetry largely for her own pleasure and to exercise and increase her creative talents. Very few of her poems were published during her own lifetime, yet we know that she wrote consistently--perhaps every day--over several decades. Poetry was her way of knowing herself and understanding the world. She could control and express her ideas and emotions through poetry, perhaps the most demanding form of writing.

    What does it mean to be a disciplined poet? It means writing and rewriting poems until they seem to be as perfect as possible. Dickinson left behind many drafts of her poems--sometimes including alternate wordings, as if to acknowledge that her writing was still seeking perfection.

    Dickinsons discipline was self-imposed. She met no publishing deadlines. She did not write for a patron who sponsored her creative efforts. She did not expect the world to acknowledge her poetry as soon as it was written. Yet now she is considered one of the greatest poets ever to have written in the English language. She valued the labor and the results of a job well done. Emily Dickinson is a model not only for writers, but for anyone who wishes calmly and determinedly to pursue a goal, even without the prospect of an immediate reward.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateJan 20, 2009
    ISBN9781491750179
    Emily Dickinson: Self-Discipline in the Service of Art
    Author

    Carl Rollyson

    Carl Rollyson is professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of many biographies, including Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volumes 1 & 2; William Faulkner Day by Day; The Last Days of Sylvia Plath; A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan; Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews; and Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated. He is also coauthor (with Lisa Paddock) of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. His reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New Criterion. He also writes a weekly column on biography for the New York Sun.

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      Book preview

      Emily Dickinson - Carl Rollyson

      Emily Dickinson:

      Self-Discipline in the Service of Art

      Copyright © 2009 by Carl Rollyson

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      ASJA Press

      An imprint of iUniverse, Inc

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      ISBN: 978-1-4401-1534-9 (sc)

                978-1-4917-5017-9 (e)

      iUniverse rev. date: 01/08/08

      Table of Contents

      TIMELINE

      PROLOGUE: Self-Discipline

      CHAPTER 1:   The Birds That Stay

      CHAPTER 2:   Now and Forever

      CHAPTER 3:   To Be Great—Like Mr. Michael Angelo

      CHAPTER 4:   Love and War and Fame

      CHAPTER 5:   The Aftermath

      CHAPTER 6:   Revival and Loss

      CHAPTER 7:   Home is so far from Home

      CHAPTER 8:   The Mind Alone without Corporeal Friend

      SUMMING UP A LIFE

      AFTERWORD TO PARENTS

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      GLOSSARY

      TIMELINE

      1830:

      December 10: Emily Dickinson is born in Amherst, Massachusetts.

      1844:

      The Republic of Texas is annexed by the United States.

      1846:

      June 15: The United States divides the Oregon Country with Great Britain. The area below the 49th parallel becomes U.S. territory, while that above joins the Dominion of Canada.

      May 13: The United States declares war on Mexico after eleven Americans are killed in a border dispute.

      1848:

      January 24: Gold is discovered at Sutter’s Creek, setting off the California Gold Rush.

      February 2: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican-American War.

      July 19: A group meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, demands equal rights for women, such as the right to vote.

      Emily Dickinson completes her formal schooling.

      1856:

      July: Austin Dickinson, Emily’s brother, marries Susan Gilbert.

      1857:

      March 6: The United States Supreme Court declares that slaves are not citizens.

      1858:

      Emily Dickinson writes her first poems.

      1861:

      April 12: The Civil War formally begins when Confederate soldiers fire on Union troops in Ft. Sumter, South Carolina.

      1862:

      The peak year of Emily’s productivity as a poet, the year she falls in love—probably with Pastor Charles Wadsworth—and begins writing to the essayist and social reformer Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

      1865:

      April 9: The Civil War ends when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, to the commander of the Union forces, General Ulysses S. Grant.

      April 14: President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by the actor and Confederate

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