She herself was of the part of life that is always youth, always magical. She wrote of it as she grew to know it, step by step, discovery by discovery, truth by truth - until time merely became eternity.
She herself was of the part of life that is always youth, always magical. She wrote of it as she grew to know it, step by step, discovery by discovery, truth by truth - until time merely became eternity.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Audio Other(Other - Unabridged, 4 Cassettes)
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Overview
She herself was of the part of life that is always youth, always magical. She wrote of it as she grew to know it, step by step, discovery by discovery, truth by truth - until time merely became eternity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780786103973 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 01/28/1993 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged, 4 Cassettes |
| Product dimensions: | 6.69(w) x 9.52(h) x 1.33(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Today Emily Dickinson is recognized not only as a major poet of the American nineteenth century but also as one of the most intriguing poets of any place or time, in both her art and her life. The outline of her biography is well known. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and, except for a few excursions to Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, spent her entire life there, increasingly limiting her activities to her father's house. "I do not cross my Father's ground to any House or Town," she wrote, referring to a personal reclusiveness that was noticeable even to her contemporaries. In the front corner bedroom of that house on Main Street, Dickinson wrote over 1,700 poems, often on scraps of paper and on the backs of grocery lists, only a handful of which were published in her lifetime and then anonymously. She was known to give poems to friends and neighbors, often as an accompaniment to the cakes and cookies she baked, sometimes lowering them from an upstairs window in a basket. Her habit of binding groups of poems together into little booklets called fascicles might indicate she felt her poems were presentable, but most of her poems never went farther than her desk drawer where they were discovered by her sister after Dickinson's death in 1886 of kidney failure. In her lifetime, her poetry remained unknown, and although a few small editions of her poems were published in the 1890s, it was not until 1955 that a reliable scholarly edition appeared, transcribing the poems precisely from the original manuscripts and preserving all of Dickinson's typographical eccentricities (see Note). Convincingly or not, she called publication "the auction of the mind" and compared thepublic figure to a frog croaking to the admiring audience of a bog.
It is fascinating to consider the case of a person who led such a private existence and whose poems remained unrecognized for so long after her death, as if she had lain asleep only to be awakened by the kiss of the twentieth century. The quirky circumstances of her life have received as much if not more commentary than the poems themselves. Some critics valorize her seclusion as a form of female self-sufficiency; others make her out to be a victim of her culture. Still others believe that her solitariness has been exaggerated. She did attend school, after all, and she maintained many intimate relationships by letter. Moreover, it was less eccentric in her day than in ours for one daughter—she had a brother who was a lawyer and a sister who married—to remain home to run the household and assist her parents. Further, all writers need privacy; all must close the door on the world to think and compose. But Dickinson's separateness—which has caused her to be labeled a homebody, a spinster, and a feminist icon among other things—took extreme forms. She was so shy that her sister Lavinia would be fitted for her clothes; she wore only white for many years ("Wear nothing commoner than snow"); and she rarely would address an envelope, afraid that her handwriting would be seen by the eyes of strangers. When asked of her companions, she replied in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself that my father bought me."
However tempting it is to search through the biographical evidence for a solution to the enigma of Emily Dickinson's life, we must remember that no such curiosity would exist were it not for the poems themselves. Her style is so distinctive that anyone even slightly acquainted with her poems would recognize a poem on the page as an Emily Dickinson poem, if only for its shape. Here is a typical example:
'T is little I could care for pearls
Who own the ample sea;
Or brooches when the Emperor
With rubies pelteth me;
Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
Or diamonds, when I see
A diadem to fit a dome
Continual crowning me.
From the Hardcover edition.
Table of Contents
Note on the Author and Editor viii
Chronology of Dickinson's Life and Times x
Introduction xviii
A Note on This Text xxvii
Poems
67 Success is counted sweetest 3
187 How many times these low feet staggered 3
193 I shall know why - when Time is over 4
199 I'm "wife" - I've finished that 4
211 Come slowly - Eden! 5
214 I taste a liquor never brewed 5
216 Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - (two versions) 6
225 Jesus I thy Crucifix 7
228 Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple 7
239 "Heaven" - is what I cannot reach! 7
241 I like a look of Agony, 8
243 I've known a Heaven, like a Tent 8
248 Why - do they shut Me out of Heaven? 9
249 Wild Nights - Wild Nights! 9
250 I shall keep singing! 10
251 Over the fence 10
252 I can wade Grief- 11
254 "Hope" is the thing with feathers 11
258 There's a certain Slant of light, 12
271 A solemn thing - it was - I said 13
273 He put the Belt around my life 13
274 The only Ghost I ever saw 14
280 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, 15
285 The Robin's my Criterion for Tune 15
288 I'm Nobody! Who are you? 16
291 How the old Mountains drip with Sunset 16
303 The Soul selects her own Society 17
311 It sifts from Leaden Sieves 18
312 Her-"last Poems" 19
315 He fumbles at your Soul 19
320 We play at Paste 20
322 There came a Day at Summer's full, 20
324 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church 21
326 I cannot dance upon my Toes 22
327 Before I got my eye put out 23
338 I know that He exists. 23
341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes 24
365 Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? 25
374 I went to Heaven 25
378 I saw no Way - The Heavens were stitched 26
389 There's been a Death, in the Opposite House, 26
391 A Visitor in Marl 27
401 What Soft - Cherubic Creatures 28
414 'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch, 28
425 Good Morning - Midnight 29
435 Much Madness is divinest Sense 30
441 This is my letter to the World 30
448 This was a Poet - It is That 30
449 I died for Beauty - but was scarce 31
451 The Outer - from the Inner 32
454 It was given to me by the Gods 32
462 Why make it doubt - it hurts it so 33
465 I heard a Fly buzz - when I died 33
475 Doom is the House without the Door 34
479 She dealt her pretty words like Blades 34
486 I was the slightest in the House 35
489 We pray - to Heaven 36
492 Civilization - spurns - the Leopard! 36
501 This World is not Conclusion. Fascicle 17 37
348 I dreaded that first Robin, so, 38
505 I would not paint - a picture 39
506 He touched me, so I live to know 40
349 I had the Glory - that will do 40
507 She sights a Bird - she chuckles 41
350 They leave us with the Infinite. 41
508 I'm ceded - I've stopped being Theirs 42
509 If anybody's friend be dead 42
510 It was not Death, for I stood up, 43
511 If you were coming in the Fall, 44
351 I felt my life with both my hands 45
352 Perhaps I asked too large 46
328 A Bird, came down the Walk 46
512 The Soul has Bandaged moments 47
513 Like Flowers, that heard the news of Dews, [End of Fascicle 17] 48
518 Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night 48
520 I started Early - Took my Dog 49
528 Mine - by the Right of the White Election! 50
536 The Heart asks Pleasure - first 50
544 The Martyr Poets - did not tell 50
546 To fill a Gap 51
547 I've seen a Dying Eye 51
569 I reckon - when I count at all 52
570 I could die - to know 52
572 Delight - becomes pictorial 53
575 "Heaven" has different Signs - to me 53
581 I found the words to every thought 54
585 I like to see it lap the Miles 54
587 Empty my Heart, of Thee 55
593 I think I was enchanted 56
599 There is a pain - so utter 57
601 A still - Volcano - Life 57
606 The Trees like Tassels - hit - and swung 58
607 Of nearness to her sundered Things 59
613 They shut me up in Prose 60
617 Don't put up my Thread and Needle 60
627 The Tint I cannot take - is best 61
640 I cannot live with You 62
642 Me from Myself-to banish 64
646 I think to Live - may be a Bliss 64
650 Pain-has an Element of Blank- 65
657 I dwell in Possibility 66
670 One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted 66
675 Essential Oils - are wrung 67
690 Victory comes late 67
709 Publication - is the Auction 68
711 Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds 69
712 Because I could not stop for Death 69
721 Behind Me - dips Eternity 70
728 Let Us play Yesterday 71
741 Drama's Vitallest Expression is the Common Day 72
754 My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun 73
762 The Whole of it came not at once 74
784 Bereaved of all, I went abroad 74
797 By my Window have I for Scenery 75
824 The Wind begun to knead the Grass - The Wind begun to rock the Grass 76
861 Split the Lark - and you'll find the Music 77
875 I stepped from Plank to Plank 78
889 Crisis is a Hair 78
909 I make His Crescent fill or lack 79
985 The Missing All - prevented Me 79
986 A narrow Fellow in the Grass 80
1021 Far from Love the Heavenly Father 81
1071 Perception of an object costs 81
1072 Title divine-Is mine! 81
1129 Tell all the Truth but tell it slant 82
1263 There is no Frigate like a Book 82
1304 Not with a Club, the Heart is broken 83
1311 This dirty-little-Heart 83
1412 Shame is the shawl of Pink 84
1498 Glass was the street - in tinsel Peril 84
1515 The Things that never can come back, are several 85
1545 The Bible is an antique Volume 85
1551 Those - dying then, 86
1562 Her Losses make our Gains ashamed 86
1593 There came a Wind like a Bugle 86
1598 Who is it seeks my Pillow Nights 87
1601 Of God we ask one favor, 87
1651 A Word made Flesh is seldom 88
1670 In Winter in my Room 88
1705 Volcanoes be in Sicily 90
1732 My life closed twice before its close 90
Notes 91
Reading Group Guide
1. Dickinson never published any of her poetry during her lifetime; her work was discovered after her death. As Billy Collins notes in his Introduction, "It is fascinating to consider the case of a person who led such a private existence... as if she had lain asleep only to be awakened by the kiss of the twentieth century." What conclusions can you draw about the relationship of Dickinson's privacy during her life and the nature and texture of her art?
2. Dickinson's poetry continues to be extremely influential and important for twentieth-century readers; she remains one of the most widely read American poets to this day. What accounts for this remarkable, enduring popularity, in your view? What makes her poetry seem, to so many, so contemporary? What influence or legacy do you think her work has had or left?
3. Considering Dickinson in relation to some of the exemplary poetry of her time (for instance, Walt Whitman), what features seem to distinguish Dickinson's work? Are there contemporary poets that you would compare in some way to Emily Dickinson?
4. What innovations-stylistic or otherwise-do you find or notice in Dickinson's poetry? What themes or motifs seem to recur in her work, and what do these signify for you?
5. Which individual poems in this volume do you find most compelling and affecting? Which poems do you find most difficult, obscure, or hard to penetrate?
6. Billy Collins notes that Dickinson's poetry is particularly effective in its ability to "compress wide meaning into small spaces." Discuss this feature of her work in relation to poetry in general.
7. How do you think Dickinson'sidentity as a woman-in nineteenth-century America-plays into her art?