The inner-workings of Emily Dickinsons mind continue to be an enigma to literary scholars, worldwide. Dickinsons agoraphobia caused her to live a solitary and secluded life in her Amherst, Massachusetts home for a large portion of her life. She rarely received visitors, and in her mature years she never went out (Ferguson, et. al.; 1895). It is also known that she was in love with a married man (no one knows for sure exactly who this man was) who eventually ended their relationship and this left her very distraught. Some scholars believe that at one point in her life, Dickinson suffered a nervous breakdown, possibly caused by the break-up of the relationship. A woman named Rebecca Patterson exposed the most dramatic and shocking revelation about Emily Dickinsons life. Pattersons discovered that many of the emotional love poems that Dickinson wrote were addressed to women. She published her findings in a 1951 book entitled The Riddle of Emily Dickinson. It was later found out that Dickinson wrote many letters of sexual fantasy and longing to several women. The most notable of these women was her good friend and sister-in-law, Sue Gilbert. The discovery of Dickinsons affection for woman does not contradict the fact that she was deeply in love with a man at some point in her life. There are many love poems that Dickinson wrote to men. In todays society, Emily would probably be considered a bi-sexual. Homoerotic thoughts and tendencies were not a possibility during Dickinsons time because the idea of homosexuality had yet to be socially constructed. That is the reason she had to hide the true intentions of her poetry. The love poems that Dickinson wrote to men are distinctly different from the love poems that Dickinson wrote to women. This paper will examine various examples of Dickinsons love poems and point out those differences.Many of Dickinsons love poems had sexual undertones. There is an apparent difference betwe...
