Customer Reviews

Emily Dickinson (Berg Women's Series)

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The poems of Emily Dickinson, as well as the poet herself, have always been an enigma to me. The few poems that have become popularized have become almost trite (There is no frigate like a book..."). The poems seemed to be beyond my understanding. Ms. Dickenson's (no relation) slender book has changed that.

The point of the book is to explore what we can of Emily Dickinson's nature though her poetry. She left little else to define her by and it is only by luck and through a sister's love that we have the poems at all. Ms. Dickenson takes the reader through the issues that have developed about Emily Dickinson's life: Was she truly a recluse, perhaps a bit insane? Did she suffer from unrequited love? Was she a holy roller with all her talk of death and God? The book finds answers to these questions through an examination of her poetry and what we know of the world around her, including her letters to others. The end result is a vision of a dynamic, dedicated poet, striving artfully at her craft, self sufficient and far from orthodoxy when it came to her religious beliefs.

Ms. Dickenson's conclusions about Emily Dickinson are not universally shared by scholars and some have criticized her research. Nonetheless, the book is a great starting point for those trying to explore Emily Dickinson's poetry seriously. Now, rather than shrinking from the unusual punctuation, the lack of clear meaning, I have come to appreciate it as a kind of verbal jazz, a studied series of riffs on man, God and life. Try it, you'll like it.