Rating: 
Summary: This is the soul of a real poet
Review: This is the best book of poetry I own--the depth of her work is absolutely breathtaking! Emily Dickinson is America's greatest poetic genius, and I am deeply sorry she could not be alive to hear those words. For anyone who feels we have violated her artistic rights I say this: any hermit who sacrifices, meaning she is a true hermit, and is misanthropic because she is so much more intelligent and appreciative than the rest, should know that their hardship and dedicated energy (in essence, the loneliness) has been well observed. And though she is enigmatic, often troublesome, so innovative it makes you salivate (unpetentious modernism, hurray!), she is so beautiful it makes the heart ache, the brain tingle, the eyes glisten. I know, above all, that this is brilliance in words, completely unharmed by a great editor and collected in a way that would make Emily, in her own little worldly way, blush.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest of all writers of poetry in English
Review: This is the standard and authoritative collected edition of Emily Dickinson's poems. It is a book that will stay with you for the rest of your life. I can think of no finer writer of poetry in English who manages to invest so short and simple a construction - no more than a couple of lines in some cases - with such emotional force. I say 'simple', but her poems are simple only in a deceptive sense. An unfinished poem like "A letter is a joy of earth/ It is denied the gods -" (that's the whole poem) says more about the joy of constructing prose than any number of effusive efforts from the Romantics.Miss Dickinson has suffered from having been appropriated by the rather dreary crowd of 'cultural critics' who cannot grasp that a work of art tells us primarily not about the social mores of the time it was written in but about the human spirit. She is especially vulnerable to this sort of irrelevant sophistry, having lived as a recluse for much of her life and thus being ripe for 'interpretation' that is nothing more than a recitation of modern political sensibilities. That's a shame, and it certainly shouldn't put you off reading her. So far as I'm concerned, there is no one - not even Shakespeare, not even Jane Austen or Dickens - whom I read more frequently, and with greater pleasure and benefit.
Rating:
Summary: Great poems!
Review: What can I say? This book is great!
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