Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

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Summary: Poetry that helps the reader see subtle beauty.
Review: Emily Dickinson lived her life in a solitary room; a place where she found amazing insight writing letters an poems. She marks her verses with simple phrases that show the reader a vision and not its personal interpretation. In some cases she puts into words what most of us attempt to capture with our thoughts. This extraordinary skill is a mark of only the best poets, but not all can write consistently as Emily can. Despite the mellow tone of the majority of her work, Emily still captures the flavor of life without compromising its tranquility. Emily never suffers from redundant confusion and her poems reflect a love for solitary beauty.

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Summary: an american treasure
Review: Growing up in Amhearst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson's life appeared quite uneventful to all those around her. This collection proves however, that Miss Dickinson's inner thoughts and dreams were anything but uneventful. Subtly chronicalling her evolution from wistful girl to probing woman, "Collected Poems" allows its reader to journey side by side with Miss Dickinson in her philisophical and religious journey.

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Summary: Emily Dickinson's Poetry is altered by the editor
Review: I am a big fan of Emily Dickinson, I love her poetry, but this edition is thoroughly rotten. It is not Emily Dickinson's poetry, but the edited version of her poetry, significantly changed by the same editor who rejected Dickinson's poems while she was alive. This edition is changed so much from the original poems that most of Dickinson's meaning is lost. If you want to read what Emily Dickinson really wrote, I reccomed the complete poetry of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson, it is the complete and original poetry of Dickinson.

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Summary: Emily Dickinson's Poetry is altered by the editor
Review: I am a big fan of Emily Dickinson, I love her poetry, but this edition is thoroughly rotten. It is not Emily Dickinson's poetry, but the edited version of her poetry, significantly changed by the same editor who rejected Dickinson's poems while she was alive. This edition is changed so much from the original poems that most of Dickinson's meaning is lost. If you want to read what Emily Dickinson really wrote, I reccomed the complete poetry of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson, it is the complete and original poetry of Dickinson.

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Summary: What was Higginson Thinking?
Review: I would like to know what Higginson was thinking when he obliterated Emily's poetry. He actaully had the arrogance to think that he knew what she 'intended' to write. This is an absolute farce of a book. Compare the hacked and pieced poems in this 'book' to the ones you find in 'The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson' edited by Thomas H. Johnson. That is the book to get. Johnson was part of the team that maticulously read her hand-written versions and published a word for word, dash for dash version. If you want to read what the genious Emily originally wrote seek the REAL works, not this attrocious adaptation! The print speaks for itself.

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Summary: Not the original versions!
Review: If you want to read Emily Dickinson's poetry in their original form and you want to discover the incredible vitality of this poet's intellect, imagination, and artistic skill, don't buy this book. The poems in this collection are "improved" versions of the original poems which can be found in other available editions. Moreover, the selections include most of ED's least interesting work. When ED died two people selected some of her poems and prepared them for publication by adding punctuation, altering words, and even omitting words, lines, and whole stanzas so that the polite readers of her day would find ED's poems more palatable and less offensive.

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Summary: An anthology or a selection is not enough for Dickinson.
Review: It can be fairly said that Emily Dickinson is the most sensible American poet up to this date. Her themes range from love to death, but she prefers the latter; and her poetic artistry is far more musical than Baudelaire's, more vivid than Christina Rossetti's. In her way of writing her soul and senses in a poem, she can only be compared to Spanish Romantic, Gustavo A. Becquer; both in themes, and metaphorical pictures, although not in style. She is one true American classic. I am rating the book with nine points, not because the selection is poor or weak; rather because a selection is not enough when dealing with Dickinson. Her minor poems are her finest and, because each person has his own favorite, a title having the words "Complete Works" is more appropiate. However, it is a good start for a poetry lover, and Dickinson's Poems are esay to find.

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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 (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world.

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Summary: A historic edition.
Review: No "selected poems" can do justice to the complexity of Emily Dickinson's love-long labor of writing poetry. This edition has the advantages of convenience and completeness. Its historical importance is that it stopped condescending reactions to her quirky language and off-beat sensbility in their tracks.

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Summary: It is the best poetry book I have read!
Review: Poems can express feelings that you normally can't. In this book Emily expresses Love, Life, Nature, and Time and Eternity. One of my favorite poems, in this book, is: I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there is a pair of us -- don't tell They'd banish us you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog. In this poem I think Emily is trying to say she is nobody. I mean, she is nobody important and if you think she is important she would like her privacy. If you think poetry is not for you, please give this book a try.

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