~Happy 183rd Birthday Emily Dickinson~

 The End Has Come! Our class is about to be wrapped up and tomorrow is the final day of our blogs. I wish I posted more on this during the semester, but maybe, just maybe I'll continue updating this weekly or bi-weekly. Hope everyone enjoyed reading this as it has been pretty fun for me to do! 

How fitting is it that this possible final blog ends on a poet that we actually talked about in class? Today we celebrate the 183rd birthday of Emily Dickinson! (hit me with a picture please!)

Credit: www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Emily Dickinson was born on this very day back in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. A very famous poet in our generation, but was semi private in her time. Out of nearly eighteen hundred poems, only a handful were published in her lifetime. It wasn't until 58 years ago that her complete and basically unaltered collection of work was published in 1955. Though it didn't receive the greatest reviews at first, this woman is now considered one of the most important poets in American history!

She died on May 15th, 1886 at the age of just 55 to "Bright's disease" which was a form of kidney disease that now we would call acute or chronic nephritis. For two and a half years she was dealing with this before her death. Her funeral was rather interesting as she was laid in a white coffin with vanilla scented heliotrope, which is a highly fragrant plant, and blue field violets placed about it. Higginson read "No Coward Soul Is Mine", which was a favorite poem of Dickinson written by Emily Bronte. Lastly, she had previously asked to not be driven to the cemetery, but instead carried through a field of buttercups. Her burial is at West Cemetery.

I made this post rather short because I'm sure all of you read her introduction in our book, and I didn't want to take up too much of your time, because I'm sure you have finals to study for, or a blog to post/comment on as well. My final thoughts on her are that Emily was a great poet. She wrote so many wonderful poems and the fact that they were super short, yet super meaningful, made me so interested that I have probably re-read more than a dozen of them over and over again. I encourage anyone who would like to learn more about her to head over to her website. CLICK THIS LINK!
Here's a short one minute video on her website:

Thanks to all of you who have been reading this. Thanks to you who are just now reading this blog for the first time. Will this be the last post on this blog? Tomorrow is the due date. Will I continue to update and provide birthdays every week? Or will this blog become full of dust and rot in the back corner of a dark abandoned house? Tune in next time(?) as we find out these answers and more!