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her niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi recalls Emily at her father Edward's annual Commencement Week tea party, writing, "Later on in her life, Emily Dickinson forsook her usual seclusion at these times, and radiant as a flying spirit, diaphanously dressed in white, always with a flower in her hand, measured her wit and poured her wine amid much excitement and applause from those fortunate enough to get near her" (42). With measured wit, Dickinson freely poured her wine, and at times her enjoyment of wine spilled onto the page. 1 Raised in Massachusetts during the rise of the temperance movement, Dickinson was well aware of temperance literature, yet her poems neither support abstinence outright nor do they view drinking naïvely as a pleasure with no dangers. Instead, Dickinson explores the topic of drink with a multifaceted and at times contradictory approach that seeks to acknowledge and praise the spiritual and metaphorical value of alcohol, while at the same time acknowledging the dangers of excess and drunkenness. 2 Central to Dickinson's poetry about drink is her fascination with paradox, with locating the ecstatic and the spiritual, and with accessing both through altered states of consciousness. Dickinson repeatedly returns to this complex theme because the metaphorical nature of the language available to describe alcohol and drinking serves as a vehicle for her to examine spirituality, nature, consciousness, and transformation.While writing poems involving alcohol, Dickinson could hardly have been immune to widespread contemporary attitudes about drinking shaped largely by the temperance movement and church leaders. The rise of the temperance movement, and women's participation in it, was in many ways tied to the culture
her niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi recalls Emily at her father Edward's annual Commencement Week tea party, writing, "Later on in her life, Emily Dickinson forsook her usual seclusion at these times, and radiant as a flying spirit, diaphanously dressed in white, always with a flower in her hand, measured her wit and poured her wine amid much excitement and applause from those fortunate enough to get near her" (42). With measured wit, Dickinson freely poured her wine, and at times her enjoyment of wine spilled onto the page. 1 Raised in Massachusetts during the rise of the temperance movement, Dickinson was well aware of temperance literature, yet her poems neither support abstinence outright nor do they view drinking naïvely as a pleasure with no dangers. Instead, Dickinson explores the topic of drink with a multifaceted and at times contradictory approach that seeks to acknowledge and praise the spiritual and metaphorical value of alcohol, while at the same time acknowledging the dangers of excess and drunkenness. 2 Central to Dickinson's poetry about drink is her fascination with paradox, with locating the ecstatic and the spiritual, and with accessing both through altered states of consciousness. Dickinson repeatedly returns to this complex theme because the metaphorical nature of the language available to describe alcohol and drinking serves as a vehicle for her to examine spirituality, nature, consciousness, and transformation.While writing poems involving alcohol, Dickinson could hardly have been immune to widespread contemporary attitudes about drinking shaped largely by the temperance movement and church leaders. The rise of the temperance movement, and women's participation in it, was in many ways tied to the culture
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