Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

What is distinctive about Dickinson's choice of words in her poems?

look at her poems

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Emily completely disregarded the rules of grammar and language, and instead used words as she saw fit. Due to this style her poetry takes on a unique style which is both admired and criticized. "...she distilled or eliminated inessential language and punctuation from her poems. She leaves out helping verbs and connecting words; she drops endings from verbs and nouns. It is not always clear what her pronouns refer to; sometimes a pronoun refers to a word which does not appear in the poem."

Emily also had a deep love for words and their meanings, and often created poems based solely on defining a words she was interested in at the time, for example, "Pain has an element of blank," "Renunciation is a piercing virtue," and "Hope is the thing with feathers."..."One of her amusements was to read Webster's Dictionary (1844) and to savor words and their definitions."

Source(s)

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dickinson.html#style