[originaltext] Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest American poets. She wa

Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest American poets. She was born in a typical New England village in Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. She was the second child of the family, She died in the same house fifty-six years later. During her life time she never left her native land. She left her home state only once. She left her village very few times. And after 1872 she rarely left her house and yard. In the last years of her life she retreated to a smaller and smaller circle of family and friends. In those later years she dressed in white and avoided strangers. The doctor who attended her illness was allowed to "examine" her from another room, seeing her walk by an opened door. She was thought of as a "strange" figure in her home village. When she died on May 15th, 1886, she was unknown to the rest of the world. Only seven of her poems had appeared in print. But to think of Emily Dickinson only as a strange figure is a serious mistake. She lived simply and deliberately. She faced the essential facts of life. According to Henry James, a famous American novelist, she was one of those on whom nothing was lost. Only by thus living could Dickinson manage both to fulfill her obligations as a daughter, a sister, and a housekeeper and to write on the average one poem a day. She read only a few books but knew them deeply. Her poems are simple but remarkably rich. Not until the I950s was she recognized as one of the greatest American poets.