Dickinson: Poems

Rating:
Summary: An innovative poet
Review: Emily Dickinson is one of the most strange and original poets of all. So many of her weird poems are about death (but I guess what poet doesn't write about death right?). So it was her themes and subject-matter as well as her poetic style and syntax that were very odd at times, especially for the Victorian age which had such strict set rules for poetry composition and whose poetry focused on "nice" themes. My favorite is "The Chariot", which happens to be one of her more conventional pieces. It begins: "Because I could not stop for Death, / he kindly stopped for me; / The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality." Wonderful. And certain poems are delightful, like the use of metaphor in her romantic poem "Wild Nights" or the simplicity of "I'm nobody, who are you?" Most of the poems however have no title, they're known by their first line.

Rating:
Summary: A prism which captures the white light of reality.
Review: 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 captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows 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 observed, are in fact about everything. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader, and even to children.

The present book, which has been edited by Brenda Hillman, gives us accurate texts of the poems in a 150-page selection taken from the authoritative variorum edition of Thomas H. Johnson, the well-known Dickinson scholar who worked many years to establish the correct texts.

The book is beautifully printed in two-colors on excellent paper, and in a tiny format which is perfect for the pocket. It would in fact make a very nice gift. You'd be making a gift of poetry which is one of the wonders of the world.