SOURCE: “Dickinson's Chemistry of Death,” in American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 1, March, 1998, pp. 27-43.

In the following essay, Wilson examines Dickinson's poems concerning death, noting that while the poet's attitude toward the power of the scientific method is generally favorable, she rejects the validity of scientific conclusions about death's mysteries.

In 1877, in the autumn of her life, Emily Dickinson, drawing from her internal spring, reminisced about connections among science, death, and language in a letter to Thomas Higginson: “When Flowers annually died and I was a child, I used to read Dr. Hitchcock's Book on the Flowers of North America. This comforted their Absence—assuring me they lived” (L 2:573).¹ Dickinson here refers to the Catalogue of Plants Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Amherst College (1829) of Edward Hitchcock, the scientist and theologian who brought modern science to Amherst during his tenure as president of Amherst College (1845-...