Emily Dickinson, born May 15, 1830, wrote nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime. Only about ten were published while she was alive. She hid the rest in drawers, tucked inside small booklets she sewed together by hand. Nobody knew they existed until after her death in 1886, when her sister Lavinia discovered them. Dickinson's poems are famous for being short and unusual. She used dashes instead of periods. She capitalized words in the middle of sentences. She broke the rules of grammar on purpose to create surprise. One of her most famous poems begins: "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" It is only eight lines long, but it raises a big question about whether being famous is really worth wanting. Dickinson spent most of her adult life at her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. She rarely left the house and communicated with friends mostly through letters. Some people think she was shy. Others believe she chose solitude because it gave her the quiet she needed to think and write. Her poems cover enormous topics -- death, immortality, nature, and love -- in just a few lines each. She proved that a poem does not need to be long to be powerful.