You know her name. You saw it by following quoted lines of poetry; printed on greeting cards, cross stitched and framed on your grandmother's bathroom wall and engraved on silver lockets. Considered one of America's greatest poets, you are no stranger to his work. You know his name. Say it. Emily Dickinson. And boy, was she a freak! …that's true, most geniuses are. Emily Dickinson dedicated much of her privileged and solitary life to her art. He employed a brilliance for lyricism, unconventional form, syntactic experimentation and pioneered the possibilities of poetic art. The use of fragmentation in his poetry eliminates excessive verbosity and gets straight to the heart of the matter. This compressed lyric usage with its characteristic refusal to conform became a trademark of modernist poetry in the 20th century. So yeah, it's kind of a biggie. Most of Dickinson's work relies heavily on the musical quality of her verse. One approach to organizing his poems was to write in the “fourteen-year-old” structure. This meter is the form of nursery rhymes, ballads and religious hymns. Ballads were originally used for storytelling, where the lyrics were set to music. By reading Dickinson's poem aloud, one can easily grasp the rhythmic quality that makes up the images that tell the story. The example given of Emily Dickinson's poem read aloud has no music, but the animation and gentle cadence of the speaker's voice provide a melodic undertone to the story. NATURE Along with the reading selected above, Dickinson's work reflects a strong reverence for the natural world. This appreciation for nature is conveyed through a series of recurring references and images. In poem no. 627, "The bees-became like a butterfly... in the center of the paper... gh I than him- could live longer, he will have to live longer- than me-for I have but the power to kill, Without -the power to die-” (p.1691-2) One thing is clear, and that is Dickinson's intention to protect and guard “The Owner” of this poem resonates with the power of the gun, as an instrument of muse. The tragedy of the inanimate object is that it will never die, because it has never lived. Destined to spend eternity passed from one owner to another, this loaded gun is only worth something if used by another hundreds of short poems in her life. Having read only a small portion of her work, it is clear to me that this woman's acknowledged genius is well deserved and that I still have much to learn from her. Dickinson's poetry touches lives. death, nature, religion, sexuality, identity, gender roles, and that's just the surface.