American lyrical poet, an obsessively private writer - only seven of her some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime, five of them in the Springfield Republican. Dickinson withdrew from social contact at the age of 23 and devoted herself in secret into writing. I felt a Cleaving in my Mind - As if my Brain had split - I tried to match it - Seam by Seam - But could not make them fit. The thought …showed first 75 words of 1003 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1003 total…and other manifestations of natural and human violence, which she hide into her writings. Pain and extreme psychic feelings were among her central themes. Pain widens the sense of time, it swallows the self, creates its own sense of eternity. She wrote to Higginson, "I had a terror - since September - I could tell to none - and so I sing as the Boy does by the Burying Ground - because I am afraid."