Biography of Emily Dickinson

Compiled by Whitney DeVos for Kore Press and Big Read Tucson

"Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 to Emily Norcross and Edward Dickinson, prominent members of the Amherst community. She spent her childhood at the Dickinson Homestead surrounded by a vivid social life, responsible at an early age for doing chores, housework, and entertaining visitors..."

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Emily%20D%20Bio

Why Emily? Why Poetry? Why Now?

Collected by Kore Press on Sept. 29, 2011 for Big Read Tucson, featuring the voices of beloved Tucson scholars and artists

"The best poetry -- Dickinson's is a prime example -- opens our eyes to the world in fresh ways, gives us words for emotions and perceptions that we all experience but can't always express, challenges convention, unsettles certainties, offers wisdom and consolation, shocks and surprises, and in its playfulness and riddling, is just plain fun..."

-- scholar Susan Aiken, University of Arizona English Department

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Why Emily?

Reading Like a Monk

NOTES ON CRITICAL READING: “Feasting on the Word” (based on the
Benedictine's Lectio Davino)

"How should I live my life? One of humanity’s fundamental questions is  personalized and focused in the reading of literature. In these different voices and texts, we find other options and ideas for the way we can live, personally and as a community..."

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Reading Like a Monk

Emily Dickinson Timeline

A timeline of significant events in Emily's life

1855, Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass:

"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand… nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself..."

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Dickinson Dates

And for a blank timeline, click here.