There’s a certain Slant of light: Poet & Context

Born in 1830, Emily Dickinson lived most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, a key environment that influenced her poetry. She hardly ever left her home and garden, but freely explored the universe in her poetry.
Dickinson was known for her unusual approach to poetic structure. She often fused high and low diction, experimented with unconventional punctuation and capitalization, and wrote in compressed, dense verses.
She is considered a major voice in American poetry, despite the fact that she was virtually unknown during her lifetime and fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published while she was alive.
Notoriously reclusive and introspective, Dickinson’s poem “There’s a certain Slant of light” is often interpreted as a reflection of her internal, emotional landscapes. The poem brings to life the speaker’s emotional reaction to the physical world.
Dickinson’s understanding of nature and its relationship to human emotion is evident in this poem. Her works often link nature, emotion and the spiritual or mystical.
She points out that this slant of light on winter afternoons can cause an almost physical impact on the observer, making them feel desolate similar to the “Heft” of cathedral tunes.
Tongues of nature, spirituality, and personal emotion all intertwine in her poetry. Dickinson’s reclusiveness, religious upbringing, and complicated relationship with faith greatly influenced her writings, as seen in “There’s a certain Slant of light.”
Furthermore, Dickinson lived during the time of American Civil War and post-war period, which had a significant impact on the mood of her poetry.
This period had an influence on Dickinson’s personal view of religion and her observations of nature and human emotions, which is clearly seen in this poem.
Dickinson’s personal circumstances, the historical and cultural context, and her unique perspective on life and nature all amalgamate in the writing process of “There’s a certain Slant of light”, rendering it a deeply introspective and multi-faceted poem.