SOURCE: "Names and Verbs: Influences on the Poet's Language," in Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 131-203.

In the following essay, Miller investigates the various works and authors who influenced the style, theories, and themes of Dickinson's poetry. Miller contends that perhaps the greatest influence on Dickinson was the Bible, which served as a model for Dickinson's use of several techniques, including compression, parataxis, and disjunction

Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? … They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system … One must be an inventor to read well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar"

… I present a case for various stylistic, theoretical, and thematic influences on Dickinson's writing...