Dickinson, Emily

Collected Works Of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (Notable American Authors)

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Collected Works Of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (Notable American Authors)
Emily Dickinson , and Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Manufacturer: Reprint Services Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0781226279
Release Date: 2007-03-25

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mother from another planet
Great Job
Want to start reading poetry?
Restores What Should Never Have Been Tampered With At All
You buy this only if you know the REAL poems

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0316184136

Amazon.com

Emily Dickinson proved that brevity can be beautiful. Only now is her complete oeuvre--all 1,775 poems--available in its original form, uncorrupted by editorial revision, in one volume. Thomas H. Johnson, a longtime Dickinson scholar, arranged the poems in chronological order as far as could be ascertained (the dates for more than 100 are unknown). This organization allows a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the sometimes-clunky rhyme schemes of her juvenilia, including valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings from her last years. Quite a difference from requisite Dickinson entries in literary anthologies: "There's a certain Slant of light," "Wild Nights--Wild Nights!" and "I taste a liquor never brewed."

The book was compiled from Thomas H. Johnson's hard-to-find variorum from 1955. While some explanatory notes would have been helpful, it's a prodigious collection, showcasing Dickinson's intractable obsession with nature, including death. Poem 1732, which alludes to the deaths of her father and a onetime suitor, illustrates her talent:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

The musicality of her punctuation and the outright elegance of her style--akin to Christina Rossetti's hymns, although not nearly so religious--rescue the poems from their occasional abstruseness. The Complete Poems is especially refreshing because Dickinson didn't write for publication; only 11 of her verses appeared in magazines during her lifetime, and she had long-resigned herself to anonymity, or a "Barefoot-Rank," as she phrased it. This is the perfect volume for readers wishing to explore the works of one of America's first poets.

Customer Reviews:

mother from another planet.......2007-04-06

Under a surface of innocence, Emily Dickinson's witty, acerbic, playful & profound poems are America's wisest contribution to poetry. Sometimes she riddles, sometimes she puns--she puns not only in ambiguous word choice, but also in ideas and topics. Her small gems are the unique response of genius to the world, a dialogue on the most inspiring level--and from a given woman's experience, too. But I think Dickinson surpasses the merely human--she was sent from another planet to rescue us from Whitmanesque excesses.

Great Job.......2007-03-26

Thanks for the fast payment. I will mail the Tabs tomorrow. I have left positive feedback.

Want to start reading poetry?.......2007-03-23

Emily is a great place to begin a study and enjoyment of poetry. This book has it all.

Restores What Should Never Have Been Tampered With At All.......2007-01-13

The words of America's greatest nineteenth-century poet stand for themselves---when they are allowed to be read as written---so I'll offer no comment on them, merely say in all humility that I am glad to live in an era when Dickinson's poems are available to be read as she wrote them. If you're serious about wanting to read the life-altering works of this great, quiet voice, seek out this volume, or another that features her work in its original, purest form.

You buy this only if you know the REAL poems.......2006-08-10

Amazingly enough, some of her UNEDITED poems are just recently being published....Although they're still hard to find. Anyone who has read her biography will understand why her unedited writings do not exist until at least 2005. And what has been promised is still not altogether available, as far as I can find.
I buy the earliest editions of her poetry (and biographies) because I find her connection with Emily Bronte beyond fascinating. Yet, I can't find a book on the subject. I think Dickinson was extremely interested in the writings and the person who was Emily Bronte. But all she had to go on at the time was Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte. And I'd appreciate it if someone would tell me about a book that plunges into this vortex, because I've yet to find one. Dickinson had a poem read at her funeral that she THOUGHT Emily Bronte had written. Well, Emily Bronte surely did, but we'll never know how much Charlotte edited it. A word here and there....
Meanwhile, people like me are reading the edited poems and trying to see them through the eyes of people like Emily Dickinson who didn't have the advantage of knowing the writings had been edited.
Round and 'round we go, eh?

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium: A Facsimile Edition

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A herbarial life

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium: A Facsimile Edition
Emily Dickinson , and Raymond Angelo
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674023021

Book Description

In a letter from 1845, the 14-year-old Emily Dickinson asked her friend Abiah Root if she had started collecting flowers and plants for a herbarium: "it would be such a treasure to you; 'most all the girls are making one." Emily's own album of more than 400 pressed flowers and plants, carefully preserved, has long been a treasure of Harvard's Houghton Library. This beautifully produced, slipcased volume now makes it available to all readers interested in the life and writings of Emily Dickinson.

The care that Emily put into her herbarium, as Richard Sewall points out, goes far beyond what one might expect of a botany student her age: "Take Emily's herbarium far enough, and you have her." The close observation of nature was a lifelong passion, and Emily used her garden flowers as emblems in her poetry and her correspondence. Each page of the album is reproduced in full color at full size, accompanied by a transcription of Dickinson's handwritten labels. Introduced by a substantial literary and biographical essay, and including a complete botanical catalog and index, this volume will delight scholars, gardeners, and all readers of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Customer Reviews:

A herbarial life.......2007-02-18

Wonderful book, tells much about the author's reluctance to expose herself to the living world.

The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition

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One of the most important poetry collections available

The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition
Emily Dickinson
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters
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The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

ASIN: 0674018249

Book Description

Emily Dickinson, poet of the interior life, imagined words/swords, hurling barbed syllables/piercing. Nothing about her adult appearance or habitation revealed such a militant soul. Only poems, written quietly in a room of her own, often hand-stitched in small volumes, then hidden in a drawer, revealed her true self. She did not live in time but in universals--an acute, sensitive nature reaching out boldly from self-referral to a wider, imagined world.

Dickinson died without fame; only a few poems were published in her lifetime. Her legacy was later rescued from her desk--an astonishing body of work, much of which has since appeared in piecemeal editions, sometimes with words altered by editors or publishers according to the fashion of the day.

Now Ralph Franklin, the foremost scholar of Dickinson's manuscripts, has prepared an authoritative one-volume edition of all extant poems by Emily Dickinson--1,789 poems in all, the largest number ever assembled. This reading edition derives from his three-volume work, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (1998), which contains approximately 2,500 sources for the poems. In this one-volume edition, Franklin offers a single reading of each poem--usually the latest version of the entire poem--rendered with Dickinson's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization intact. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition is a milestone in American literary scholarship and an indispensable addition to the personal library of poetry lovers everywhere.

Customer Reviews:

One of the most important poetry collections available.......2007-03-16

If you know Dickinson's compositional method -- with almost no publication in her lifetime, often with many versions of one poem, and with poetic significance altered by the paper and exact handwriting -- you will recognize that any printed edition of her work cannot be perfect. Still, Franklin has worked with care, intelligence, scholarship, and order on finding the best renditions of her poems, and these are those. If you learn to love her, you may want the hardback! Her "little" lyrics are a joy forever, and you may wear out your copy.

101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

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The American school anthology
A Manifested Dream
Inspiring
Excllent Read
Quite a Bang for Your Buck!..........

101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
Edgar Allan Poe , Walt Whitman , Robert Frost , Langston Hughes , Emily Dickinson , T S. Eliot , and Marianne Moore
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Great Love Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

ASIN: 0486401588

Book Description

Rich treasury of verse from 19th and 20th centuries, selected for popularity and literary quality, includes Poe’s "The Raven," Whitman’s "I Hear America Singing," as well as poems by Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, T S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, many other notables.

Customer Reviews:

The American school anthology .......2005-05-02

This is a wonderful collection of American poetry classics. It contains most of the poems that have been taught through the years in American schools as the ' classics ' of American Literature. It does not really touch the American poetry of the past fifty years.
Most of its poems are the shorter poems of great poetic masters , for instance for Wallace Stevens, " Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird' and the 'Emperor of Ice- Cream' but not the 'Idea of Order at Key West' for Eliot, " Prufrock" but not the "Wasteland " or the "Quartets".
A wonderful collection most highly recommended.

A Manifested Dream.......2005-03-22

This book is the manifestation of the dream of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky when he said, "Poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is." Brodsky believed that poetry books should be distributed free of charge in many places, such as supermarkets and factories. He also had the idea that an anthology of poetry should be, "found in every hotel room in the land." Brodsky went on to create the American Poetry & Literacy Project in 1993, and is the compiler of this book.

This little anthology covers more than 350 years of American poetry. It includes poets who were famous in their own time such as Edgar Allen Poe, and poets whose talents weren't realized until after their death, such as Emily Dickinson. It displays American patriotism in poems such as Walt Whitman's, "I Hear America Singing", and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride." Poems such as, "Dream Deferred (Harlem)" by Langston Hughes, and "Incident" by Countee Cullen, explore themes of racial prejudice and African American culture. War, loneliness, nature, children, all the many issues and emotions we as human beings find ourselves dealing with today, are all included in this small, yet well-comprised anthology.

Many of my personal favorites include poems about poetry itself. These poets and writers give serious, and not so serious, contemplation to the art of writing. On page 65, the teacher and library assistant Marianne Moore begins her poem, "Poetry" with these lines:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.

Moore, known for her complex poems was known as the "poet's poet," and was the editor of the literary magazine The Dial, according the book's biography about her.

Pulitzer prize winner Archibald Macleish's poem, "Ars Poetica" gives his view of what a poem should be on page 72:

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

The books biography on Macleish says that he was an editor for Fortune magazine, Librarian of Congress, and Assistant Secretary of State.

According to Andrew Carroll, the Executive Director of The American Poetry and Literacy Project, Joseph Brodsky never saw the final version of this book, "101 Great American Poems" before his death. He leaves us however, with Brodsky's inspiring words in his Introduction to the book:

"Books find their readers, and if not, well let them lie around, absorb dust, rot and disintegrate. There is always going to be a child who will fish a book out of the garbage heap. I was such a child, for what it's worth..."

For us, Brodsky's own poetry and the legacy he left behind in The American Poetry and Literacy Project, continues to be worth a fortune.

~Brian Douthit
author of "Perfectly Said: when words become art"

Inspiring.......2005-02-04

I really enjoyed this alot. I felt I was transported into a world of great poems. There really wasn't a bad piece here. Indulge and buy this book.

Excllent Read.......2003-09-15

This book is quite wonderful. It includes some of my all time favorite American Poets. I recommend it to anyone who likes poetry.

Also Recommended: Quotes, Poems, and Words That Flow by Kevin Grommersch

Quite a Bang for Your Buck!.................2001-11-19

............this small book of poetry contains the work of nearly forty of the best known American poets. From Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Frost, there are poems in this collection that are sure to appeal to everyone! Also represented in this collection are ten women poets and eight African Americans including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley. There's even a poem by Abraham Lincoln that reveals his thoughts about his childhood experiences.

Book Description

Only five of Emily Dickinson's poems were published while she lived; today, approximately 1,500 are in print. Dickinson's poetry reflects the power of her contemplative gifts, and her deep sensitivity courses through her correspondence as well. Lovingly compiled by a close friend, this first collection of Dickinson's letters originally appeared in 1894, only eight years after the poet's death. Although she grew reclusive in her later years and seldom saw her many friends, she thought of them often and affectionately, as her missives attest. The small cast of daily characters in Dickinson's little world takes on vivid life in the letters, and her famous wit sparkles from every page.

Customer Reviews:

Irresponsible Attitude in Print Quality and Paper Used.......2004-11-21

For "The Letters of Emily Dickinson" by Thomas H. Johnson, 999 pages, Hardcover.

Paper used for Hardcover Edition is terrible, thin and fragile. After few pages read, your fingers will mark the pages easily.

Printing quality is bad, may be plates used are too old. Characters are ambiguous sometimes; often an "e" looks like a "c". You can even see some fiber marks in the print, it looks like a product from an old copy machine. Unclean printing makes this too-white paper even dirtier.

This is an irresponsible attitude for Hardcover book. Unlike "The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson" also by Belknap Press Harvard, which has excellent quality. Price is about the same, $110 for 999 pages and $220 for 1442 pages.

The content suits my needs perfectly, thought it spoiled my reading everytime. It should be improved.

The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (Belknap)

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Emily meets granddaughter - One poet to another
Best way to read all of Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson
New readers's edition is authoritative
Poems of Emily Dickinson

The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (Belknap)
Emily Dickinson
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674676246

Book Description

Customer Reviews:

Emily meets granddaughter - One poet to another.......2006-02-23

how delightful to find a beautiful copy to introduce my granddaughter to Emily Dickinson

Best way to read all of Dickinson.......2005-11-28

How do you begin to review the complete poems of Emily Dickinson? Reading beginning-to-end, every line of every poem is the very best way to encounter her, and this edition the best way to undertake the adventure. She has so many dimensions that just when you think you're beginning to understand her well, she shows you another facet, a new side. Having plummeted into the sea of her verse and become dripping wet, I invite you to do likewise. Life is filled with little surprises, and one of the greatest for me has been Emily Dickinson's couplets, short little two-line poems. Here's one that I nominate for winner in the category "best short love poem in English:" "Least rivers - docile to some sea.// My Caspian - thee." (206)

My advice is don't be overly swayed by focusing on the poems you and the world already know well: e.g. "Because I could not stop for death" and others. Try focusing on some you may never have seen before. In case you are wondering, I'm no relation to Emily Dickinson--just a kindred spirit!

The Poems of Emily Dickinson.......2005-09-29

The readers' edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson provides a condensed and affordable alternative to the three-volume variorum edition, also published by Belknap. It contains the same number of poems, but omits the alternate versions and contextual notes Franklin includes in the variorum. I prefer this edition of Dickinson's poetry to the 1955 edition edited by Thomas Johnson because it includes several poems the earlier one didn't, and because Franklin seems to have a better handle on transcribing Emily Dickinson's sometimes confusing handwriting than Johnson did. This collection is a good acquisition for anyone planning to study Dickinson, or anyone who wants to read her poems in their original, non-Victorianized form. Her original spelling and punctuation lend even more character to her already intriguing poems, so reading them this way is an experience I would definitely recommend.

New readers's edition is authoritative.......2004-09-29

Now there are two readers' editions of Emily Dickinson's poems that are usable for close readings and scholarship. By usable, I mean that the texts--note the word "texts"--are close to what Emily Dickinson wanted them to be. The earlier Thomas H. Johnson text has been an acceptable and competent version since it was published in 1955. Johnson's readers' edition-the one without all the scholarly apparatus-contains 1775 poems. (In the same year Belknap Press of Harvard University Press issued his three-volume variorum of all the known poems.) This is cool. This new version of Emily Dickinson poems was edited by R.W. Franklin, and the readers' edition was published in 1999. It contains 1789 poems-unfortunately with a different numbering than Johnson--based, we are told, on probable date of composition. Franklin also edited a fresh variorum edition also published by Belknap Press of Harvard. I am boring you with all of this detail to tell you that although the Johnson texts are good texts if you are serious about Dickinson--meaning if you actually care about what she wrote on the page--the Franklin will give accurate texts and is the new authority. F.W. Franklin has been working since the '60's on details where Johnson perhaps lacked information and insight. He knows whereof he speaks, and he has done his utmost to reassemble Ms. Dickinson's original manuscripts in their proper order. Previous versions of the poems--those before Johnson and Franklin--regularized rhyme and otherwise abrogated the accuracy of the poems. They were cleaned up according to late 19th century standards, and the texts--despite editorial comments to the contrary--are corrupt. That means that they are inaccurate. In conclusion, if you want Emily Dickinson with accuracy--despite the rapturous testimony of some reviewers of other presentations of the poems--go for the Johnson or Franklin texts. Franklin is most current and should be impeccable. Other texts, including some that are in supposedly respectable American literature anthologies, may be suspect. (One of the most respectable uses texts that derive from late 19th century texts that were declared corrupt some 40 years ago.)

Poems of Emily Dickinson.......2003-05-21

This is an excellent book for anyone who LOVES Emily Dickinson. Although it does not contain all the different versions of her poems, it is comprehensively edited to have the version of each known poem that is believed to be Dickinson's most complete and revised. This edition also seem to have the most complete collection of poems--1,789-- compared to the other "complete poems". However, if you are looking for an edition for studious reasons, this edition does have different numbering for the poems than the ones usually used (the editor claims them to be in the most accurate chronological order possible).
The binding of this book is VERY nice and has its own ribbon for marking pages. Definitely a nice book.

Average customer rating:

The special value of a volume of this kind
The Loaded Gun Which
Perhaps we are looking at the wrong aspects...
Strong Medicine
Poems that are one of the world's wonders.

Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
Emily Dickinson
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0316184160

Customer Reviews:

The special value of a volume of this kind .......2006-01-15

There are Emily Dickinson's greatest poems, most of which my guess is , have in one way or another been anthologized. There is her complete oeuvre of 1775 poems, a large volume indeed. I am not a Dickinson scholar and I found myself a bit lost with such a large number of poems to search through for new gems.
This present volume edited by the dean of Dickinson scholars purports to choose of the total oeuvre the very best of her work.
I truly appreciate this as a volume of this kind can extend my knowledge and appreciation of her poetry in a way which is most economical and helpful to me.

The Loaded Gun Which.......2004-02-07

Everyone who aims for the ultimate, the elusive, and the exquisite, ought to pack. The edition is affordable, durable, well-organized, comprehensive . . . and produced with care NOT to alter the form or format of the poems . . . which for some dreadful reason a lot of folks seem to feel compelled to do . . .

more importantly . . . all that white witchcraft still dazzles

For those whose aquiantance with the Belle of Amherst is limited to the classroom edition - i.e., There is no Frigate Like a Book, et al., look again. Dickenson really is the epitome of the rugged individualist - a free spirit - in ways surprisingly opposed to her contemporary, Whitman, she arrives at similar conclusions going no further than her garden. She is the inward sojourner - at home in the harshest tensions and conflicts of the psyche - where her distinctly feminine sensitivity speaks truth in "slant" - as she qualifies her enormous insight.

Most haunting: 'Success is counted sweetest', 'To learn the Transport by the Pain', 'My life closed twice before its close', and, "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -". Dickenson laments our sovereign anguish, our exile from the immediate truth or the comprehensive immediacy of truth, the quest for which her poems articulate an urgent hunger enveloped in alternately the most naturistically ambient references or stonily direct terms.

Perhaps we are looking at the wrong aspects..........2002-07-30

Don't get me wrong, I truly love a large selection of the poems in this volume. However, that is a measure of Emily Dickenson and me, not T. Johnson's collection. What makes this book better than many that are around and about, as has been mentioned, is the lack of editing to her poems--something that has always bothered me. In this regard, the content of the poems is better than many others, however there are other issues of note.

This is, of course, an abridged collection. As such, we are forced to rely on the opinion of another. Granted this is common enough with poetry collections, but that doesn't change the very nature of each person having differing interests. There is no way to know if the ones he leaves out are just as good or even better, from each individuals perspective, without going to more comprehensive texts.

Regardless, I do have one gripe with this book that is unrelated to the above pettiness. The method of dating each poem seems silly to me. The reason is that they are all claimed to be from one of several (if memory serves 3) years separated out over several decades. That and there are two listings of dates for each poem, which I don't recall off hand why they did that, and it may serve some purpose, but it's not useful information if when these poems were written can only be pinned down to plus or minus five-ten years. I can't blame Johnson for this as I imagine that is as close as is known, but, by the same token, the dates could have been left out so that it doesn't detract from the actual poetry.

All in all I would recomend this book, but I might suggest getting a more complete version instead (so long as it is unedited--Emily hated it when people wanted to edit her poems, and I think that we should respect that).

Strong Medicine.......2002-01-10

I was never actually a fan of poetry until I encountered Emily Dickinson's poems. It seems as if she has written a poem for everyone. I strongly recomend this book, as my English teacher did to me, not only because of my love for Emily Dickinson, but for the quality of the book. It is obvious that Thomas H. Johnson, the editor, put many long hours of hard work into gathering this collection. Many of her poems were simply scribbled on little pieces of paper, which makes me wonder what kind of literary genius she must have been. With the help of this book, she has become my favorite poet, and I have learned that poetry can be strong medicine for the hurting soul. Final Harvest never leaves my side.

Poems that are one of the world's wonders........2001-06-23

When it comes to choosing an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, we need to be very careful. Selections of her poems have appeared in many editions, and the earlier ones - which are still being reprinted - often contain extensively edited and revised versions of her poems which do not give us what she actually wrote.

Her poems are so unusual, in terms of their diction, meters, grammar, and punctuation, that earlier editors felt obliged to replace her characteristic dashes with more conventional punctuation, and to regularize and smooth out her texts to make them more acceptable to readers of the time.

In fact, it was only when Thomas H. Johnson's editions appeared that readers were finally given an accurate version of the original texts, with Emily Dickinson's diction and punctuation restored.

Johnson has produced three different editions of the poems. The first, a 3-volume Variorum Edition (1955), includes all of her many variants, since Emily Dickinson often added alternate words to her drafts and in many cases seems never to have decided on a final reading. These variants, though extremely interesting to scholars, enthusiasts, and advanced students of ED, are not really necessary in an edition for the general reader.

What the general reader needs is an edition in which the editor, after closely examining the manuscripts and taking into account all relevant factors, gives what he feels is a sensible and acceptable reading, and this is what Johnson has given us in the two other editions he prepared, a Reader's edition of the Complete Poems (details of which are given below), and an abridgement of this which included only what he felt were her best poems.

In other words, readers can feel confident that in the present edition they have been given (insofar as it's possible to get her idiosyncratic manuscript drafts over into typography) at least one accurate reading of ED's original draft.

Those who would like to look at the variants can always consult Johnson's Variorum (1955), or the more recent Variorum of R. W. Franklin (1998). Better still, if they can, they might take a look at R. W. Franklin's sumptuous 2-volume 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' (1981), which gives photographic facsimiles of many of her manuscripts.

Emily Dickinson is a very great poet. Personally I think that in some ways she is the greatest poet of all. In the present edition we have been given accurate texts of a selection of her poems, arranged so far as was possible in chronological order of composition. Johnson's is an edition which should serve the general reader well enough for most ordinary purposes.

Another excellent Reader's edition that can be recommended has been prepared by ED's most recent editor, R. W. Franklin (1999). Either of the Johnsons or the Franklin (which contains 14 additional poems) will give you access to a body of poems that are so far above the ordinary run of poems that we really ought to have another word for them.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which conducts the white light of reality, a reality which as it passes through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has pointed out, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world. Whether you select one of the Johnsons or the Franklin edition, it will become a book that you will cherish, a golden book and endless source of pleasure and inspiration that you will find yourself returning to again and again.

For those who may be interested, details of Johnson's reader's edition of the Complete Poems are as follows :

Book Description

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830, Dickinson began life as an energetic, outgoing young woman who excelled as a student. However, in her mid-twenties she began to grow reclusive, and eventually she rarely descended from her room in her father’s house. She spent most of her time working on her poetry, largely without encouragement or real interest from her family and peers, and died at age fifty-five. Only a handful of her 1,775 poems had been published during her lifetime. When her poems finally appeared after her death, readers immediately recognized an artist whose immense depth and stylistic complexities would one day make her the most widely recognized female poet to write in the English language.

Dickinson’s poetry is remarkable for its tightly controlled emotional and intellectual energy. The longest poem covers less than two pages. Yet in theme and tone her writing reaches for the sublime as it charts the landscape of the human soul. A true innovator, Dickinson experimented freely with conventional rhythm and meter, and often used dashes, off rhymes, and unusual metaphors—techniques that strongly influenced modern poetry. Dickinson’s idiosyncratic style, along with her deep resonance of thought and her observations about life and death, love and nature, and solitude and society, have firmly established her as one of America’s true poetic geniuses.

Includes an index of first lines.

Authors:

Authors

Authors