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StillnessLiterary fact

Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems, yet only about ten were printed in her lifetime, all without her name and most altered by editors. After her death in 1886, her sister Lavinia found the rest, many copied into small hand-sewn booklets.

Amherst, Massachusetts, 1886

Literature

The story behind the card

Dickinson spent almost all her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, and in her later years rarely left the family home. Between 1858 and 1865 she copied about 800 poems into 40 booklets, now called fascicles, and no one knew they existed. The first selection was published in 1890 by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, but they reshaped her poems to suit the taste of the time, changing words and replacing her many dashes with ordinary punctuation. Her rhymes were unusual too: she often used slant rhymes, words that almost but not quite rhyme, such as “room” and “storm”. Only in 1955 did Thomas H. Johnson publish all her poems close to the way she wrote them.

Türkçe oku
Emily Dickinson 1.800'e yakın şiir yazdı, ama sağlığında bunların yalnızca on kadarı basıldı; hepsi imzasız çıktı, çoğunu da editörler değiştirdi. 1886'da ölümünden sonra kız kardeşi Lavinia geri kalan şiirleri buldu; birçoğu elle dikilmiş küçük defterlere temize çekilmişti.
Amherst, Massachusetts, 1886

Dickinson neredeyse bütün hayatını Massachusetts'teki Amherst kasabasında geçirdi; son yıllarında aile evinden neredeyse hiç çıkmadı. 1858 ile 1865 arasında 800 kadar şiiri, bugün “fasikül” denen 40 küçük defterde temize çekti; kimse bu defterlerin varlığından haberdar değildi. İlk seçkiyi 1890'da Mabel Loomis Todd ile Thomas Wentworth Higginson yayımladı. Ancak şiirleri dönemin zevkine uydurmak için sözcüklerle oynadılar, bol kullandığı tirelerin yerine de sıradan noktalama işaretleri koydular. Uyakları da alışılmışın dışındaydı: Çoğu zaman “room” ile “storm” gibi tam tutmayan, yalnızca birbirine yakın sesli sözcükleri uyak olarak kullanırdı. Şiirlerin tamamı, onun yazdığı biçime yakın olarak ancak 1955'te Thomas H. Johnson'ın baskısıyla yayımlandı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Emily Dickinson
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