So tonight during my American Literature class we got to talking about Emily Dickinson, but before we jumped into the discussion of her poems, we saw a brief PowerPoint presentation of her. On the first slide, beneath a picture of her, there was a quote from her that said, "I am one of the lingering bad ones". When I read that, I almost immediately thought of the girl in the picture above. For those of you who don't recognize her, she's a character in of of my favorite Disney movies, Meet the Robinsons. And if that doesn't jog your memory, here's the part of the movie she's in (you can skip to the last nine seconds if you only want to see her, I couldn't find a clip with just her, but the whole thing is pretty funny).
This is how I envision Emily Dickinson as a child. As you can tell, I don't think very highly of this particular poet. She definitely had some poems of impact, but I personally don't care to read her. I read enough in the newspapers about death. I don't really care to sift through her constant references to it in her poetry.
Anyhow, Dickinson is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of early American Literature. But not just her. I don't really care for Melville, Poe, Rowlandson, or basically half the people I've read this semester. I've found shining rays of hope in Emerson, Whitman, and Douglass, but the rest of the semester thus far... eh, I don't really care to revisit. Most everyone up to this point that I've read from this era has some serious issues with their religious/political agendas in their writing, or like in the case of Poe, think they're the best writers on earth and no one can compare. So if anyone cares to dissuade me, I'd love to have a better appreciation for these authors, but so far, my teacher hasn't really been able to do that for me.
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