Purple and Divinity

For the Beauty and Belief Symposium I attended "Purple and Divinity: Emily Dickinson's Eucharistic Poetry" by Alyssa Devey, a student here at BYU. Devey compared Dickinsons poetry  to the Euacharist- as it embodies Christ, so does Dickinson's poetry embody language through Catholic and spiritual terms. She makes the material subjects of her poetry spiritual by representing them in the same manner and using the same language that's normally reserved for the sacred. Dickinson was not Catholic but she took the traditional sacraments and replaced them with her own to express what she thought spirituality was and what it should accomplish. It was very interesting as I had not read much of her poetry and interesting to learn about the history and context behind the poetry.