A Bird came down the Walk—

1. Emily Dickinson Attends a Poetry Workshop

Who is the “I” anyway? There are way too many I’s. Very self absorbed. Also, all the rest of the pronouns are ambiguous. Is he a lover? A father? God? Is she your sister? You’ve thrown a bunch of unnecessary they’s into your writing as if everyone else is a faceless, nameless pronoun, and you alone possess some superior contexts. You should have been more careful about clearing up those deficiencies in revision. Your readers have no idea what to make of a passage with no clear characters or even a hint of any concrete subject. And by the way, who is “it”? What laps up the miles? As for mechanics, you should really read over the rules for comma usage—all those dashes are terribly distracting. And I’m not sure if anyone has told you, but rhyme is out. So is personification of animals and inanimate objects. Maybe you should just stick to writing letters, hack.


2. Emily Dickinson Stays Home

Emily Dickinson is hailed as one of America’s greatest poets. Since the nineteenth century, her poetry has been read, studied, and admired by generations of adoring fans. Her verse is both enigmatic and psychologically penetrating, and it is rendered with unparalleled grace and wit. Dickinson’s poetic imagination knew no boundaries as she fearlessly charted unmapped intellectual territories. Her piercing observations of humanity and the natural world continue to inform and inspire her audience today. Dickinson’s technically adventurous poems were unprecedented when they were published and her stylistic trademarks—odd punctuation, noun capitalization, elusive characters—remain forever imprinted in the poetic cannon as a hallmark of her undeniable genius.