Emily Dickinson Use Of Nature In Her Works

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Emily Dickinson: Nature in her works Alana Wagner English 4800 Oral Presentation 2 Dr. Moores 7 October 2010 One common theme in Emily Dickinson's poetry is nature. This consists of references to trees, flowers and animals. There was apparently a garden near Dickinson's home where she spent much of her time observing nature. Dickinson talks about the joy of nature in Poem 868. She writes she believes flowers and plants grow just for the purpose of bringing smiles to the faces of humans, even if the people have little or no money. In addition to her poems that are strictly about nature, Dickinson also incorporates references to nature in her other poems. For instance, in Poem 254 Dickinson uses the idea of a bird to describe the nature of hope. Although she does not name this image a bird until the second stanza of the poem, her references to feathers, singing, and perching in the first stanza lead the mind to picture hope as a bird. Rather directly or indirectly Dickinson frequently uses nature as a form of human expression. In Elizabeth Petrino’s essay, she discusses how Dickinson uses floral metaphors in her works to criticize the mid-nineteenth-century social and sexual attitudes. According to Petrino, many female writers in this time period used “floral imagery [to convey] sexuality and allowed women more freedom of expression than had previously been available” (139). In poem 211 “Come slowly- Eden” Dickinson uses nature as a metaphor to illustrate the performance of a homosexual act between two women. The first line in the poem has a double meaning. “Come slowly- Eden” (line 1) First, it can simply be seen as one woman calling for a woman to come towards her. However, the first line could also be alluding to a woman’s sexual orgasm. In the rest of the poem, Dickinson is calling out to a woman who is not experienced in feminine

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