Talk:Emily Dickinson

Question

According to these sources [1][2] there's a poem by Dickinson called "Belshazzar had a letter—," with dash and comma as written. Any reason I shouldn't believe that this is the correct title? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:08, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

There isn't a simple answer. Dickinson titled few of her poems. (Arguably, she didn't title any of them.) As a matter of convention, publishers have often used the first lines as titles. Some have included punctuation at the end of the lines, some haven't. Doing so looks odd and may confuse readers, so my opinion is that it's better to omit it, especially when there are two consecutive punctuation marks—a practice that was far more common in the nineteenth century than today. (Incidentally, I believe the first line of the poem in question ends with a comma and then a dash, not a dash and then a comma.) There's a discussion of Dickinson's titles, or lack thereof, here. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 15:50, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Most helpful, thank you! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:54, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Did Emily have a personal life? I am doing research on her for art class and need personal imformation.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.246.205.136 (talk) 20:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

List of poems

There is now a list of poems at Wikidata: d:Wikidata:Lists/poems_by_Emily_Dickinson. Jura1 (talk) 14:00, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Comma splice/parallel construction explanation

Before reverting this edit again, please read the following explanation.

A sentence such as "He was a member of the House, the Senate, and helped elect the president" is wrong because we cannot say

He was a member of

the House,

the Senate, and

helped elect the president.

The reason is that "He was a member of helped elect the president" doesn't mean anything.

We can fix it in a couple of ways:

He was a member of

the House,

the Senate, and

the committee that elected the president.

Or, the way I chose because it doesn't invent a committee:

He

was a member of the House and the Senate, and

helped elect the president.

Please be aware that this construction is correct, in contrast to the original sentence. Chenopodiaceous (talk) 19:58, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Major Themes in Poetry

I added additional information in the morbidity theme section about her poetry. I added the connection to winter theming support from critic Edwin Folsom and its citation. Tkiss1 (talk) 07:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Gendered Name Usage

There is a common and unfortunate bad habit in the way people talk about female artists (and female professionals of any kind) where they feel more comfortable referring to them using their first names. This article is rife with this bad habit, and it calls Dickinson "Emily" throughout. A precursory glance at any comparable male figure will show that they are almost exclusively referred to using only their surname or their full name. For instance, the entry on Whitman never calls him "Walt" except when explaining where the nickname came from.

Referring to female professionals in a systematically more informal way results in an indirect diminishment of their accomplishments. It implies that women are entitled to less respect than their formally-titled male counterparts. This practice is a holdover from when men dominated all professional fields and wanted to portray women as inferior and unable to compete at the same level as the men. Please consider revising this article so that it consistently refers to Dickinson in the same way it would refer to her if she were male.

142.113.239.44 (talk) 04:02, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

MOS:SURNAME states After the initial mention, a person should generally be referred to by surname only and Generally speaking, subjects should not otherwise be referred to by their given name. You are correct that this is how the article should present Dickinson. I have reinstated your changes as they fit the MOS. Notfrompedro (talk) 12:31, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

References