Emily Dickinson Lexicon

Guest: Cynthia Hallen, PhD, Associate Professor of Linguistics and English Language at BYU  One of the most significant writers in American history was virtually unknown during her lifetime. Poet Emily Dickinson was an introvert. She hardly left the house, never married, and maintained many of her friendships through correspondence alone. It was only after she died that her poems became popular. Emily Dickinson’s poems are much like her life; there is more to them than meets the eye, full of allusion and ambiguity, puns and idioms.