Talk:Emily Dickinson/Archive 1

message: I recently submitted a link to a website featuring a short film about a meeting between Emily and Higginson. The site also includes information strictly about Emily Dickinson. The link was removed, yet another link resides under the external links heading titled, "TV documentary," which curiously links to a synopsis of the documentary and distributor links to purchase a DVD. Why is this link still on the Wikipedia page? This link certainly violates the advertising and promotion rules of this encyclopedia.
Sprocketboy 02:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Emily Dickinson External Link Deletion

message: The image of Dickinson that was formerly on this page is owned by the EMELYN of Amherst College and is not in the public domain.
Paul Statt
Director of Media relations
Amherst College 
psstatt@amherst.edu
---------------------
Wouldn't this fall under fair use?
Right now the photo is listed here as having an expired copyright: see . At the least, it should either be deleted from there as well or justified as fair use.  Sam 18:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo is  copyrighted

message: put her middle name in!!!
I intend to rewrite the biography (and romantic life) section of this article over the next week or two, since it's quite inadequate.  Improvements before this gets done might be better focused on the poetry sections, though I'll try to preserve any good material. -- Rbellin|Talk 15:38, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: By all means let's erase and scissor out the facts.  --Kstern999 19:15, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  biography rewrite 

message: I today removed this:
:Dickinson lived to write a "letter to the world" that would express, to quote R.N.Linscott,im poems of absolute truth and of Henry James called "the landscape of the soul." If the cultivated taste of her own day failed to appreciate her genius, as both Samuel Bowles and Thomas Wentworth Higginson failed, the long day has passed and she has won the fame that "belonged" to her.
Because I couldn't make any sense of it. If you can, feel free to restore it. Naturenet | Talk 11:24, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed text

message: It seems rather silly that almost half of this article is about Dickinson's sexuality, which is irrelevant and unsupported.  It's certainly an interesting sidenote, but should something as trivial and thoroughly unproved really be such a significant part of this article?
This is the second longest section, yet it is entirely speculative. There is also no counter evidence given to supplement the "gay theory." similarity to Shakespeare's love sonnets to a young man, Lincoln's supposed homosexuality etc
: I agree that this section needs work, and I had intended to rewrite it based on better and more varied sources but got sidetracked and ran out of time during my work on the Dickinson biography.  It is not "speculative," however -- in fact, it's a purely factual summary of various Dickinson scholars' views on the subejct, and should be expanded to report more scholars' opinions.  (Remember, WP:NPOV dictates that we report all relevant opinions on a matter such as Dickinson's sexuality.)  
: The section has also been subject to repeated vandalism and POV-pushing in the past.  For now, I consider it a minimally acceptable placeholder that briefly discusses the issue and is fair and NPOV, but it will need rewriting and better sourcing in the future.  I will take a crack at it myself if I am able, but other editors are (of course) also welcome to improve it. -- Rbellin|Talk 16:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loves 

message: The page includes this negative review: 
:"She was neither a professional poet nor an amateur; she was a private poet who wrote as indefatigably as some women cook or knit. Her gift for words and the cultural predicament of her time drove her to poetry instead of antimacassars....She came, as Mr. Tate says, at the right time for one kind of poetry: the poetry of sophisticated, eccentric vision. That is what makes her good — in a few poems and many passages representatively great. But...the bulk of her verse is not representative but mere fragmentary indicative notation. The pity of it is that the document her whole work makes shows nothing so much as that she had the themes, the insight, the observation, and the capacity for honesty, which had she only known how — or only known why — would have made the major instead of the minor fraction of her verse genuine poetry. But her dying society had no tradition by which to teach her the one lesson she did not know by instinct."  
I was thinking that maybe the page could close with some positive review of her work, as the article seems to narrate how Dickinson went from being unpopular in her day, to increasingly popular as the years went on. -- Andrew Parodi 09:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, hopefully someone will include some more favorable review of Dickinson's work, so as to balance out this page. I don't know which to include, though. Hopefully, someone with more knowledge will insert the appropriate comments. -- Andrew Parodi 09:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another suggestion: Include which poems were published during her life. --64.9.10.166 15:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A suggestion

message: The article says:  "Most of her work is reflective of life's small moments and some larger issues in society."  Some might view this as a quite superficial reading of the poems.  Read them all again, from start to finish, and you will have a totally different impression, one might suggest.
I want to urgently agree: "Most of the work is reflective of life's small moments..." this entirely naive and misleading. Adam Fitzgerald 02:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Characterizing the Poems 

message: I don't quite understand how Mozart could have incorporated her poetry into his music, since he died before she was born.
Cao 01:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Music 

message: This article was formerly listed as a good article, but was removed from the listing because the good article criteria section 2 is not met.  Information is not verifiable for no references or citations to facts
 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.88.67.230 (talk • contribs) 
: Say what?  The article has an extensive references section, and all of the biographical information is drawn from the handful of standard Dickinson biographies.  The good article criteria specifically state that inline citations are not required, and I have no idea how any stretch of the imagination could call the biographical information "not verifiable". -- Rbellin|Talk 18:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article removed from [[Wikipedia:Good articles]]

message: I feel this article still gives undue prominence to the controversy surrounding Dickinson's sexuality. Let's remember that Dickinson is notable as a poet, not as a putative lesbian. As a first step I am moving the poetry section to before the life section.. anyone who has any better ideas, feel free. Zargulon 15:47, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Still unbalanced

message: As almost half of this article was about Dickinson's sexuality, which is a matter of great controversy.  I moved all the parts about Dickinson's sexuality to a new article Sexuality of Emily Dickinson I noticed they did the same thing on the Abraham Lincoln article. If anyone has serious objections feel free to change the article back and propose a better solution. Cyberrex7891 05:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While I don't object to this approach (it's a matter of no consequence to me either way), there still needs to be a brief mention of the issue (say, a single paragraph) and a prominent link to the detailed article here.  You can't just delete the issue from this article entirely. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks for some reason this article seems to attract a lot of vandalism.Cyberrex7891 17:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved to new article 

message: Hi all.  Following an AFD discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sexuality of Emily Dickinson, the content has been merged back into this article.  If you do not wish to keep it, then edit it down, or get rid of it - you know better than I do how useful / reliable the info is, but it is not sufficient to stand alone as an article. Thanks. Proto::► 10:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Wikipedia Gay Lobby is at it again. Using the phrase "it has been argued that she may have been bisexual or lesbian," they have again smeared another famous person. The strategy is to make homosexuality seem normal. One tactic is to imply that many famous persons behaved in that immature, juvenile manner. There is never any direct proof, though. There are only smears and innuendoes. There absolutely is no direct, concrete, positive proof that Emily Dickinson was homosexual. Another tactic is to associate it with racial equality. With the media and educators on their side, it seems as though the Wikipedia Gay Lobby is unstoppable.Lestrade 18:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: AFD on [[Sexuality of Emily Dickinson]]

message: I'm replacing detailed descriptions (that I wrote quite some time ago) of many of the books in the References section.  (These were cut by User:Red Darwin in a quick series of massive changes to the article more than a year ago without discussion.)  Since Wikipedia is not paper, I see no reason why the Refs section ought not to provide more detailed information to readers who want to find more books on Dickinson. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:09, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. It seems silly to me to have references for claims about our references, but as you seem quite convinced that we need to make claims about our references, and I'm not strongly opposed to having references for claims about our references, I've added  tags to those claims that seem like they require some sort of reference. When you have a chance, please add relevant citations for these claims. —RuakhTALK 23:41, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reference descriptions

message: This article's references are in a terrible state and have been for a while, judging based on this talk page. Although there is a references section, it does not in any way follow the guidelines for one given at WP:CITE. Currently, anyone could claim anything is not supported, and there is no way to know whether they are right or wrong. Many of these statements seem unsupported, and the references section as it is now does little to help. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 13:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, that was based on the references list that this article apparently used to have, based on a link from a previous discussion on the subject. Why is this list gone? --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 13:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: I have heard that Emily Dickinson did not hold Walt Whitman in high regard and she considered him to be "uncultured" or "uncivilized."  Since she and Walt Whitman are considered to be "two quintessential American poets of the 19th century" I think that tidbit should be added in if it can be verified.  Alas, the place I heard it from (which is a reliable source) isn't one that is verifiable.  (Word of mouth, actually.)  Does anyone know of any legit verifiable sources that would back this up? -WarthogDemon 23:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: She did not. In fact she stated, "I never read his book- but was told that he was disgraceful." She never read him, but was warned agaisnt his style. She thought he was better left unread. Willie Stark 20:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case, is it possible to mention it within the article using a good source? -WarthogDemon 00:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anyone Know About Her Opinion On This? 

message: After trawling through the article's history again to restore content deleted by vandals several months ago, I've come to the conclusion that we aren't adequately keeping up with the constant flood of schoolchildren vandalizing this article -- so I've requested semi-protection for it. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel this article is nearing the point where it needs to be protected again. Thoughts? - AKeen 17:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: The introduction should probably be broken up into an introduction, and the biography stuff should be moved into a bio/background section.  Anyone object? -- Joe056 14:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved some of the intro stuff to the bio section.  Now that the intro is shorter, now it could handle a sentence or two summarizing her influence on 20th century poetry. I'd do this, but... I have no idea what it is. -- Joe056 23:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biography section 

message: I will be completely rewriting this article, using many of the sources that are already listed, over the next few days.  My hope is to bring it back to GA status in the near future since this is such an important article in American literature.  I've added the Under Construction banner so that no one attempts to step on my toes, but if you have suggestions about how the article is progressing, please do not hesitate to contact me either here or via my talk page.  Thanks! María (habla conmigo) 13:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, thanks very much for your good work on the article, and it's already improved a great deal.  While I like much of the recent expansion of the biography, I notice a few problems of wording and apparently misleadingly overgeneralized statements (like the current introduction to the "Life" section, which seems much too broad-brushed about the paucity of sources on Dickinson's biography and might lead someone to conclude, contrary to fact, that she was almost forgotten in her own time).  I might tweak some of this later, but in general I'd just caution against overbroad statements based on few sources; that's the other potential problem I see here, that the rewrite appears to be based on very few sources where it would be better to synthesize more of the many biographies and critical works (for instance, Habegger's recent bio should be drawn on in the "Life" section as well as Sewall).  Second, I want to protest the deletion of the annotated bibliography (previously discussed, see "Reference descriptions" above).  I think that is extremely useful material.  If the consensus is that this isn't the right style for Wikipedia to present that material, I'll be happy to recast it in prose as a new section of the article at some point soon; but I think it belongs here in some form -- the editions and secondary material are knotty enough that one useful role for an encyclopedia article is to point interested readers toward the right sources for further reading. -- Rbellin|Talk 22:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a major work in progress, so don't judge too harshly yet!  I'm adding new sources as they are available (i. e. when I check them out from the library) -- I've just added two new ones today, for example.  And it's funny that you mentioned Habegger; I just picked up My Wars are Laid Away in Books the other day and have plenty to use from it.  I will in the future correct whatever overgeneralizations or imperfections there may be, of course, but right now I'm getting my ducks in a neat little row.  I haven't even begun to skim the surface.  Some information may be removed entirely, so there's no need to critique or worry as of yet. :)  As for the Bibliography, I'm relying on current Featured Articles for direction and none of the more recent ones are annotated.  (See Harriet Tubman, for example.)  Although I can see your point about it being of interest for some readers, the Bibliography should be a list of sources from which the references are derived.  I also do not see a place in this article for a prose conversion of a description of each book or article, since a lot of it is subjective.  Perhaps a complete Dickinson bibliography can be noted in the "Further reading" section?  Also, I've moved the previous Bibliography list to my sandbox so that the book info can be integrated into the current Bibliography as it is now.  It would make sense to add any "left-overs" to the "Further reading" list if I don't have a chance to use them as sources.  Once I have all of my research done, I'll remove the Under Construction template and go through the article with a fine toothed comb.  I also plan on having it copy-edited by one of the members of the League in preparation for nominating it for GAC.  I think I have the hang of what I want to accomplish here, but it's slow going for now, I'm afraid.  If you see any glaring errors, please feel free to fix!  María (habla conmigo) 00:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm glad to see such rapid progress, and many of the concerns I described above are already taken care of (the sourcing seems especially improved already).  For an example of a featured article with an annotated bibliography that no one seems to have objected to, see 1755 Lisbon earthquake. -- Rbellin|Talk 16:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wonderful, I'm glad you approve of some of the changes so far. :)  The FA you cited isn't the best example of how articles are now judged, however; it was promoted way back in 2005 and is currently under Featured Article Review, mainly due to lack of inline citations.  I have to agree with the editor a few sections above that references for claims about the references seems a bit excessive, but I definitely feel more safe in following in the shoes of recent biography featured articles, all of which are not annotated.  María (habla conmigo) 16:54, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Complete rewrite of article

message: Is there a possibility that she suffered form Asperger syndrome rather than agoraphobia? Her prolific, obsessive creativity seems to suggest AS.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.117.23.221 (talk) 16:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been argued that ED displayed characteristics of AS, but nothing can be said for certain since 1) there was no way to diagnose it back then since it technically wasn't discovered yet and 2) it's all assumption and interpretation of secondhand accounts.  There is serious doubt that she "suffered from" agoraphobia, as well.  That's the problem with Dickinson scholars; they're all so shady. ;)  María (habla conmigo) 20:21, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Asperger syndrome

message: She only got very famous after her death I believe - the effect she had on the literary community, the fame she had, she was published finally - only after she died - no? If so I suggest a section on her Post-humous fame/effect or legacy (or even other synonymns) as it were.--Keerllston 12:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is still under construction. María (habla conmigo) 13:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't that the motto of wikipedia? -"Currently Creating" or "Constant Innotative Improvement"? - maybe not... but every article in wikipedia is under construction...--Keerllston 14:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

text: The article in fact has just such a section: Emily Dickinson#Publication and posthumous success. -- Rbellin|Talk 16:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: therefore the Strike-through text -...I'd like to help build this article in any way I can - in that section in particular--Keerllston 11:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Posthumous fame