The discussion topic of the previous class meeting was [br] [originaltext]

[14] Compared with Walt Whitman whom we discussed last week, I found Emily Dickinson strikingly different. She seemed in fact to be the complete opposite of Whitman in her life and in her work. I would like to share briefly with the class some of the trial facts of her biography. Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, nearly a decade after Whitman. In her early 20s for reasons that still remain a mystery she began to withdraw her ordinary contact with the world. [15] For the remaining 30 years of her life, she was seldom seen outside her home. In this respect she was quite unlike Whitman who loved the great outdoors. Emily Dickinson spent her solitary days corresponding with her friends and writing hundreds of remarkable poems, notably I Heard a Fly Buzz and the poem we have read for today I’m Nobody. Although she showed none of her poems to her family and sent none in letters to friends only four were published in her life time. [16] Most of the almost 12 poems were discovered in her room after she died in 1886 at the age of 56. These poems established her as a major poet, and several modem critics consider her the greatest woman poet in the English language. Eh, that’s about all I have. Are there any questions? If not, [17] we should probably begin talking about Dickinson’s I’m Nobody, the poem Professor May assigned for this week’s class discussion.