How did Emily Dickinson break the conventions of poetry?

Ms. Dickinson isn't as unconventional as you might be led to think. She did indeed use (all manner of) dashes, quite extensively in her original, handwritten manuscripts, and she had a habit of employing unconventional capitalisation. read more

Her rhyming also followed, for the most part, that of the ballad stanza (ABCB), containing both perfect and slant rhymes. So, where she deviated, if you like, was merely (ha!) in aspects of grammar, specifically punctuation and erroneous capitalisation. Nevertheless, those are highly individualistic and characteristic of Emily Dickinson’s output. read more

Dickinson started writing in the late 1850s and there is a sense of a hush in many of her poems as the impending crisis turned into a full-blown war; studies have linked her writing to the effects achieved in landscape painting by the “luminists” and their sense of a foreboding, American sublime. read more

Many scholars now identify Dickinson's style as the forerunner, by more than fifty years, of modern poetry. At the time in which Dickinson wrote, the conventions of poetry demanded strict form. Dickinson's broken meter, unusual rhythmic patterns, and assonance struck even respected critics of the time as sloppy and inept. read more