Emily Dickinson was born in the year of 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts to Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Edward was a well-known lawyer in the state and also treasurer of Amherst College. Emily's mother was not a powerful presence in her life. Emily described her mother as "not the sort of mother whom you hurry when you are troubled"(Meyer 950). Emily was raised to be a cultured Christian woman and was prevented from reading and enjoying books that her father felt would "joggle" her mind, especially her faith. However Dickinson's individuality and her sensibility didn't mesh well with the conventional piety, domesticity and social duty that her father and the church expected of her (Meyer 950).
             Despite her family's involvement and being well known in the community, Emily didn't partake in the notoriety that came from it. She ended up withdrawing from the public world and almost all social life in Amherst. Besides one year at Mt. Holyoke and a few trips here and there, she lived most of her life in her father's house. Her relationship to the world was intensely reticent. During the last 20 years of her life she rarely left the house (Meyer 950).
             Like her existence in life, Emily's involvement in poetry wasn't well known either. She kept her writings and her love of poetry a secret. Although she is now know as one of America's greatest poets, when Emily died at the age of 56, only 12 of her 2,000 poems had been published and published anonymously at that. (Meyer 950).
             Although Emily chose to live her life confined in her home, she established a world of excitement and imagination in her poetry. In her Poem "I Dwell in Possibility-" she describes the life she is able to live through her poetry.
             In the first stanza of this poem, Dickinson refers to dwelling in possibility. In this context, Possibility stands for poetry. A fairer house than ...