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Poet: Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson Art)
Poem: 441.
This is my letter to the World
Volume: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Year: Published/Written in 1955
Poem of the Day:
Aug 13 2003
Comment 24 of 24, added on January 10th, 2010 at 10:50 AM.
emily was a unique and morally conduced soul. she was a woman of intense passion and intimacy. apart from her eye condition, her reclusive life was in a sense one of detachment and safe isolation by choice free of harsh judgments from a cruel world... i think she never felt truly accepted. her love for women can evasively be seen with her words "her message is committed to hands i cannot see, for love of her... judge tenderly of me." i think emily was in touch with her devotion to god, love, life and she sought to express her profoundness in beautiful poems which those who are seekers of truth still find resonance in.
kristen from Australia
Comment 23 of 24, added on September 11th, 2009 at 1:53 PM.
Dickinson's "letter" is her body of work, of which only two (I think) poems were published during her lifetime. I believed she wanted her work to be judged not by who she was but by the work itself ("for love her her" -- love of the poetry). Dickinson did send poems to people she cared about. Her correspondence is poetical in itself. I believe this poem refers to the poems she kept hidden, the ones she did not send, because she feared how they would be judged. After she died, her siblings published bastardized versions of the poems they found. Already they were judging her work and not tenderly. Her poems were finally published in the last part of the 20th century as she wrote them. I agree with Jichael. She did not understand the world as much as the world did not understand her. I also believe her poem says doesn't want people to judge her work because of who they think she was or judge her for what they see in her poems.
Shirl from United States
Comment 22 of 24, added on September 8th, 2009 at 12:40 AM.
I think that Emily Dickinson is rightfully acclaimed as a writer, she had a brilliant, modern way of thinking that was decades ahead of her time. She pushed her candid thoughts into a society that did not allow for deviations to the norm, especially from women. She was a virgin recluse yes, but I feel like she secluded herself because she knew, after being judged poorly by her fellow Americans for having such modern ideals, that she simply could not be accepted into society in and of herself, and she had no desire to assimilate or pretend to be something she was not. She reminds people in this poem that nature is the ruling body for everyone in the end, referring to death is my best guess, and I suspect the hands she cannot see are those of Gods. To me it's as if she is not so much asking the world to judge her nicely, but reminding them that it's not their place to do so, as none of it will matter in the end.
Jennymac from United States
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Comments
emily was a unique and morally conduced soul. she was a woman of intense passion and intimacy. apart from her eye condition, her reclusive life was in a sense one of detachment and safe isolation by choice free of harsh judgments from a cruel world... i think she never felt truly accepted. her love for women can evasively be seen with her words "her message is committed to hands i cannot see, for love of her... judge tenderly of me." i think emily was in touch with her devotion to god, love, life and she sought to express her profoundness in beautiful poems which those who are seekers of truth still find resonance in.
kristen from Australia