Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Emily DickinsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1959-09-01
ISBN: 038509423X
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson
Book Review: When the Student is Greater Than the Teacher
Summary: 5 Stars
Emily Dickinson chose the wrong teacher when she reached out to Thomas Higginson, who was writing in the Atlantic Monthly, in the early 1860s. She asked him, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?" She included original verse in her letter to Higginson challenging him deeply with her brilliance, depth of emotion, and astounding writing ability. Higginson seemed almost at a loss for words. This early letter, arriving in 1862, would be the beginning of a lifelong correspondence between Dickinson and Higginson.
He was disturbed by her offbeat and radical use of punctuation. His sagely but confused advice to her was to get more in line with standard punctuation. He understood correctly that Emily Dickinson was a unique-- possibly unprecedented voice in American Letters. But, he didn't understand quite enough the greatness that Dickinson's poetry represented.
Emily Dickinson is something of a tragic figure, apparently suffering from some kind of agoraphobia and an extreme shyness. She rarely left the grounds of her father's Amherst home. Higginson would only meet her twice in his life and he would describe the first meeting as follows, "The impression undoubtedly made of me was that of an excess of tension, and of something abnormal". He described her as needing help in solving "her abstruse problem of life". He described their meeting as the most disturbing meeting of his life. He said, "an instinct told me that the slightest attempt at direct cross examination would make her withdraw into her shell".
Reading Dickinson is challenging on so many levels. Her brilliance is almost shattering to the reader. Her ability to weave images, analogies, references, and emotion into her verse evokes deep responses from readers who care to meet her very weighty intellectual challenge. The sadness and depth of feeling in her work pours out of the page and seems to almost grab one by the heart and soul and throat.
Dickinson truly demands our attention and she gets it.
Her personal world was a small one but the places that her heart and intellect traveled certainly must have included the entire universe. She's not easy to read, but she is easy to love. She is a woman of grand skill and has a way of expression that make her timeless. She loved flowers and gardening and the grass and talked often in her work of life and so many deep frustrations of unfulfilled dreams and a deep core broken sadness that resulted from the deaths of family members around her. Only after her death did the world get to appreciate her incredible talent and skill. As a poet and correspondent, she is in the highest pantheon of American literature.
She would not know much fame in her life, but she is now immortal.
This is an excellent selection of her letters and poetry. The most important aspect of this particular book is that unlike other editors, this editor has chosen to leave Dickinson's unorthodox punctuation as she wrote it. In this case, the editor did very little editing and, in standing back and taking a more passive role, he has done a great service to everyone interested in Dickinson's work.
Her poetry and her prose appear so simple, yet are so complex and difficult to fathom. Her constructions, word choices, and comparisons can be very challenging for a modern reader, but they do sing. It seems so strange that Higginson would not actively pursue publication for Dickinson during her life. I think Dickinson challenged Higginson on so many levels and this was not an unusual effect that she had on people. It's seems a shame that Dickinson didn't enjoy the fame that she deserved during her life.
"For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears."
Many of Dickinson's poems are untitled including the poem above but it is still powerful and beautiful. Dickinson wears her emotions so clearly and so proudly, it's no wonder that people needing her would be uncomfortable. She is one of these lonely aesthetes whose soul and mind is so expansive, and whose mind is so flooded with words and thoughts, that those in her presence can readily be overwhelmed. In Higginson's case, she probably didn't even have to speak to make him uncomfortable.
If Emily Dickinson had written her introductory letter to another writer or critic rather than Thomas Higginson, is it likely that she would have enjoyed fame and plaudits during her lifetime for her grand and deep poetry? Or, is it possible that Dickinson was ahead of her time, born too early into a society that just couldn't understand what she was trying to say?
I think that one has to have a little bit of sympathy for Higginson. It's not his fault, really, that he just didn't have the requisite depth of comprehension when Dickinson first approached him and throughout the ensuing years. It is clear to us reading Dickinson and Higginson's letters and his own writing, that Emily is the far brighter light of the two writers. Even at the very start of the relationship, when Dickinson asked for guidance, it was obvious that Dickinson was already the master and Higginson only a luckily-placed writer in a national magazine.
Emily Dickinson's first letter to Thomas Higginson must have come as something as a slap across the head-- he tried his best and they remained friends until Emily's death. He encouraged her and they were friends. But, perhaps there was more that he should have and could have done that he didn't. In his defense, what does one truly do when the universe arrives in a letter?
Summary of Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson
This Anchor edition includes both poems and letters, as well as the only contemporary description of Emily Dickinson, and is designed for readers who want the best poems and most interesting letters in convenient form. An excellent introduction to the work of a poet whose originality of thought remains unsurpassed in American poetry.Poetry Books
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