Sep 8, 2008
*Amherst. Massachusetts town where Dickinson lived, about ninety miles west of Boston. Although her poems mention Amherst by name only twice, it is organic to Dickinson’s poetry. She absorbed the old-fashioned Calvinism of nineteenth century Amherst. At the congregational church she attended in childhood, sermons depicted a wrathful God and threatened everlasting punishment. Dickinson frequently chose religious subjects, and yet, with the contrariety endemic to New Englanders, she rebelled far more than she acquiesced. In a few instances, she seems to have...
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