The Modernism And Characteristics Of Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Emily Dickinson, born in 1830, was writing poetry well before the formal Modernist movement began in 1914. As a matter of fact, she died nearly thirty years before the Modernist movement began. Interestingly, though, Dickinson’s poetry shares characteristics with the poetry of the Modernist movement that she would not even live to see. Poetry produced during the Modernist era (1914-1945) was defined by characteristics which set it apart from the majority of earlier-produced poetry. These defining characteristics include: short and compact lyrics, allusions, and linguistic fragments. Poetry produced by this movement represented the shifting ideals and growing feelings of alienation generated by the era’s cultural climate. Dickinson’s poetry encompasses most, if not all, of the staple characteristics of Modernist poetry. Given the …show more content…
The sentiment represented in this poem is true of Modernist ideals. Dickinson used many techniques and broached many topics that did not gain popularity until the birth of the Modernist movement, well after her death. Dickinson’s body of poetry has many characteristics that resemble work that came to define the Modernist movement. Though Dickinson was writing well before the Modernist movement, her unconventional poetry has many of the staples of the later movement. In many ways, Dickinson was the first Modernist author. This sentiment is also reflected in the way that Dickinson’s poetry was not very popular during her lifetime but since then has become widely circulated. Her poems were shorter, more compact, and contained many references than other poems of the same time period. Dickinson’s poetry forged the way for later poets to experiment and form a new type of