Book Report of The Study of Emily Dickinson
              ----Dickinson’s unique love for nature 
I. Introduction
In this summer vacation, I read a book named as The Study of Emily Dickinson. It is written by Liu Shoulan, a famous and successful scholar studying Dickinson. The author tells us not only Emily Dickinson’s life, but also some of her poems’ meaning. Thanks to this book, I can know Dickinson much better and appreciate her special poems fully. And one of her poems about nature is my favorite, and I want to share my understanding and feeling about it in this book repot.
Emily Dickinson was a great American poetess in the 19th century. She lived a lonely life but she had an unusually smart and creative mind. She wrote about 1800 short poems during her whole life, but only seven of them were published at her time. Though the society which she belonged to did not recognize her talent and innovation, she did not give up her unique creation. She used plenty of dashes in her poems but gave no title for any of them. The dashes strengthened the rhythm and musical feeling of her poems both in the shape and for the reading and reciting of them. Her poems without titles expressed themselves and her mind quite well, for there was no definite standard or requirement for the understanding of them or any poem. Different minds and different situations lead to diverse emphases. This original choice and style is not only her uniqueness but also one of her greatness. In all of her poems, about one third is about nature. She recorded what she thought deserved a wonderful poem and what she felt and loved.
II. Dickinson’s Love for Nature
Though this short poem just consists of two stanzas and each of them has lines, or more specific, forty-five words in total, it expresses a great deal of meaning with many nice images. In the first line, Dickinson writes in a summarized way, leading the whole following poem—The morns are meeker than they were— In general, the early morning in fall is getting a little cold for people who have been used to the warm or hot summer’s weather. But here, Dickinson uses a special word, meeker. This word helps her to tell the reader her delighted mood about the weather, because she can enjoy the cool and sweet early fall rather than the hot summer.
And this first line draws the reader’s great attention and curiousness to what will be in the following and why the morns are meeker than before. Then, in this successful way and with tremendous interest, both the poetess and the reader will go on with their fascinating journey to the following specific and captivating scenes.
The nuts are getting brown—
The berry’s cheek is plumper—
The rose is out of town.
First, the poetess draws a picture of the small things which are not far away from her and she can have a careful look at them. The nuts are changing their color and getting more mature. The berries are changing both their color and shape into more lovely ones. And for the roses, their thick fragrance is saturating their birthplace and suffusing the whole town and then drifting out of the town. The poetess not only depicts the alluring scenes but help the reader to feel the sweet fragrance of them. Though these are just the relatively small pretty things and the poetess only shares with the reader three images—nut, berry and rose, the pleasant scenes have already sprung forth and the pleasing atmosphere can already be felt.
Nevertheless, next, the poetess continues to show a broader scene—The maple wears a gayer scarf—/ the field a scarlet gown—. It seems that there is a festival, because all the members of this meeker morning have dressed themselves up and all in bright colors. In this broader view, human being are simply one tiny and ordinary member and what can be done is just to celebrate this common festival together with all the others—the nuts, the berries, the roses, the maples and the field. Until now, the poem reaches its climax. A whole great and extraordinary natural painting will almost be finished. Only those who have pure, deep and loyal love for nature can find this kind of beauty from it and are eager to share this love with more people. As it is known to all, everything has dual character—one is relatively positive and the other is negative and it depends on the different angles to see it. Therefore, we should be active in finding the beauty in all the living beings, especially those seemingly ugly and unpopular natural things, as the snake or other little insects. These natural living things are all warmly appreciated by Dickinson which can be easily found in her many other poems. With her strong love for nature, Dickinson answers the above question that human being should live an equal and harmonious life with other natural things, loving, appreciating and cherishing each other. That’s also why she chooses to“Lest I sh’d be old fashioned/ I’ll put a trinket on.” Here, the painting has completely been finished with human being and other natural things together. In the whole poem, Dickinson does not use a single verb which is a synonym to love, but the poem is brimming with her love for nature.
III. Conclusion
Emily Dickinson, a mysterious American poetess, left behind her a large quantity of precious spiritual treasure. The reader can enjoy not only her beautiful words, images and feeling of her poems, but also her gentle but deep love for nature and her great ecological thought. This re-reading tells us again that there are always numerous kinds of beauty in the nature, even for the seemingly unwelcome ones. But they are just regrettably neglected by the unwise eyes and the conceited minds. Thus, being modest and to be friends with the other natural things is a sensible choice.    

References:
 [1]Johnson, Thomas H. The poems of Emily Dickinson. Vol 3.Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1955
 [2]周建新.《20世纪艾米莉.狄金森研究三大特征》[J].郑州航空工业管理学院学报社会科学版,26(3),2007