The poetry of Emily Dickinson contains numerous striking images and beautiful phrases, yet also displays a first-rate intelligence. The critic Harold Bloom said that she "manifests more cognitive originality than any other Western poet since Dante," adding: "There are great poets one can read when one is exhausted or even distraught. . . . Dickinson demands so active a participation on the reader's part that one's mind had better be at its rare best." Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote over 1100 poems, only six of which were published during her lifetime, and those without her consent. The daughter of a New England clergyman, she lived quietly, unmarried, in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is now acknowledged as one of the greatest American poets.