"This is my letter to the world"

Such is the first verse of one of Emily Dickinson's poems. Her poetry, written in her native Amherst (Massachusetts) acquires a universal voice in her preoccupation with the themes of immortality, the soul, God, nature, and human relations, all expressed in a highly personal way. Her poems are brief but intense, charged with emotion and thought. Syntax and punctuation are idiosyncratic, to allow her to express so much in her tight stanzas. In the selection we are reading in this course, many of the poems express her views on poetry, the pot's task and the difficult road to poetry. "To learn the transport by the pain" probably best summarizes the idea that writing poetry is a craft that requieres de poet's pain, effort (you may compare this to Dylan Thomas' "In my craft or sullen art", a beautiful poem). Yet, the words reach readers and they may make a change in our lives, as they did for the man in "He ate and drank the precious words." As we said in class, some of the notions in this poem resemble what we saw in "The fantastic flying books of Mr Morris Lessmore." Her writing amounts to 1775 poems; each of them hides a pearl of beauty. Read and re-read over time, they will certainly tell us something new in every encounter, as they say so much in such few verses. Activity (to be handed in on Wednesday, May 2nd) Choose one of the following poems by Emily Dickinson: * "Much madness is divinest sense" * "The past is such a curious creature" * "Heaven is what I cannot reach!" * "If I can stop one heart from breaking" Write a 100-word paragraph in which you explain the poet's message in relation to life / human existence / human relations / individuality / or the theme you detect. Use your own words, write your own interpretation, without doing any Internet search to guide you. What will be considered in this activity is the way the poem speaks to you, not to anyone else.