OK, I know this is going to stir up controversy. Her pretentious mimsy little pitherings may seem profound to perhaps a 13 year old who has not yet read widely… but really, on a broader scale, do they say anything new? Do they matter? Frankly, give me someone like Sylvia Plath who at least had blood in her veins, not stale ink.
Say anything new? She died in 1886. Maybe the reason she is important is that what she was saying a century and half ago was important, not what she brings to you now.
Not that I would know. I’m not a poetry fan and have never read even a single verse of her work. However I always find it perplexing when someone reads something famous written long ago and starts complaining that it is nothing special or does nothing for them. Why is that old thing important? Maybe it is famous because it still resonates, but equally maybe it is famous because it was developmentally important.
Well, here’s some of what the poet and critic Allen Tate had to say about Dickinson nearly a century ago:
Now, just because most modern poetry readers and critics agree that Dickinson was a great poet doesn’t mean that you personally have to like her poetry, or that you can’t prefer other poetry, like Plath’s, to hers. But usually, if we as readers can’t see anything at all worth admiring in work that is generally considered great, it’s largely due to our own ignorance or lack of understanding of important aspects of the work.
Your comparison of Dickinson and Plath is interesting, and you may like this article about them. Maybe what you’re missing in Dickinson, as Tamerlane suggests, is awareness of the culture and form she was working within.
Normally I’d agree, why bother? Though there are some 19th century poets I can read fairly comfortably, making allowances for the style of the times. But Dickinson’s stuff is just the scrape of fingernails on a blackboard to me… basically like dismal Hallmark card verses.
Tiptoeing through
The house I must -
Take care lest I -
Disturb the dust.
Oh well, chacun a son gout, I suppose.
Do you think that poem is about housekeeping? Are you taking it literally? Dickenson is obviously using household mundanity as a metaphor.
I don’t think that is an actual Dickinson poem – I’m pretty sure the OP is trying their hand at parody.
Oh, I didn’t realize that. I don’t have her works memorized. I just thought he picked out something obscure, rather than throwing out something fake.
She did say hope is the thing with feathers, though Woody Allen claimed that was his nephew.
Eh, that’s okay, we’ve all got some form of “tone deafness” about some writer or other who’s generally considered great but whom we just don’t “get” or appreciate at all. It doesn’t necessarily imply any massive failing on the part of either them or us.
Gimme Basho any day…
"The old pond
A frog leaps in.
Sound of the water."
Or alternately, a danish with no hole is a donut!
Just as an example I will reiterate my great loathing of Thomas Hardy and my hope that he sleeps fitfully in his grave 
. I’m more than willing to accept that as an indictment of my artistic taste and no doubt low character 
.
These are two separate judgments:
- Evaluating the work of an artist as great, important, etc.
- Deciding whether I LIKE the artist’s work.
Consider them separately.
I used to read her after a bad break-up.