Emily Dickinson's Poetry by the Dashes

The Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke used grammatical text books that approved the use of dashes in poetry. Emily Dickinson read an article by a writer named Thomas Higginson called Letter to a Young Contributor, advising up and commerce about publishing their work. So she took her nerve in her hands and sent this man who is a perfect stranger, the following note: "Mr. Higginson, are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?"