A poet who took definition as her province, Emily Dickinson challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet's work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to f...

To be a poet was the sole ambition of Emily Dickinson. She achieved what she called her immortality by total commitment to the task, allowing nothing to deter her or intervene. Contrary to the myth that she would not deign to publish her verse, she made...

To be a poet was the sole ambition of Emily Dickinson. She achieved what she called her immortality by total commitment to the task, allowing nothing to deter her or intervene. Contrary to the myth that she would not deign to publish her verse, she made...

Monarch Notes 01-01-1963 Much Madness Is Divinest Sense This semi-serious poem makes a pronouncement of the relationship between the individual and society, asserting in the first three lines that "much madness" may seem "divinest sense/ To a discerning eye," whereas "much sense" may be...