Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein

When reading Susan Howe's book "My Emily Dickinson," I was able to learn a lot more about Emily Dickinson and the kind of person she was and how her surroundings encouraged her writing. When looking at Emily Dickinson, we know that she was a woman in recluse and didn't have the support of her own family, as well as not having very many of her poems published until after her lifetime. Then Susan Howe mentions Gertrude Stein and the fact that these two women were polar opposites of one another. Whereas Emily Dickinson remained a shut in, Stein, loved the spotlight and the recognition she was receiving in the literary world. Although these women lead very different lives, in their poetry it is easy to see that they have very similar writing styles and use the same type of language in their poems. I also found that I could understand what these poems were trying to say a lot better than the sonnets of Shakespeare and Berrigan.