Customer Reviews

Final Harvest: Poems

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When it comes to choosing an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, we need to be very careful. Selections of her poems have appeared in many editions, and the earlier ones - which are still being reprinted - often contain extensively edited and revised versions of her poems which do not give us what she actually wrote.

Her poems are so unusual, in terms of their diction, meters, grammar, and punctuation, that earlier editors felt obliged to replace her characteristic dashes with more conventional punctuation, and to regularize and smooth out her texts to make them more acceptable to readers of the time.

In fact, it was only when Thomas H. Johnson's editions appeared that readers were finally given an accurate version of the original texts, with Emily Dickinson's diction and punctuation restored.

Johnson has produced three different editions of the poems. The first, a 3-volume Variorum Edition (1955), includes all of her many variants, since Emily Dickinson often added alternate words to her drafts and in many cases seems never to have decided on a final reading. These variants, though extremely interesting to scholars, enthusiasts, and advanced students of ED, are not really necessary in an edition for the general reader.

What the general reader needs is an edition in which the editor, after closely examining the manuscripts and taking into account all relevant factors, gives what he feels is a sensible and acceptable reading, and this is what Johnson has given us in the two other editions he prepared, a Reader's edition of the Complete Poems (details of which are given below), and an abridgement of this which included only what he felt were her best poems.

In other words, readers can feel confident that in the present edition they have been given (insofar as it's possible to get her idiosyncratic manuscript drafts over into typography) at least one accurate reading of ED's original draft.

Those who would like to look at the variants can always consult Johnson's Variorum (1955), or the more recent Variorum of R. W. Franklin (1998). Better still, if they can, they might take a look at R. W. Franklin's sumptuous 2-volume 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' (1981), which gives photographic facsimiles of many of her manuscripts.

Emily Dickinson is a very great poet. Personally I think that in some ways she is the greatest poet of all. In the present edition we have been given accurate texts of a selection of her poems, arranged so far as was possible in chronological order of composition. Johnson's is an edition which should serve the general reader well enough for most ordinary purposes.

Another excellent Reader's edition that can be recommended has been prepared by ED's most recent editor, R. W. Franklin (1999). Either of the Johnsons or the Franklin (which contains 14 additional poems) will give you access to a body of poems that are so far above the ordinary run of poems that we really ought to have another word for them.

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 conducts the white light of reality, a reality which as it passes 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 pointed out, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world. Whether you select one of the Johnsons or the Franklin edition, it will become a book that you will cherish, a golden book and endless source of pleasure and inspiration that you will find yourself returning to again and again.

For those who may be interested, details of Johnson's reader's edition of the Complete Poems are as follows :

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

This is a collection of just some of Dickinson's nearly 1800 poems which the editor, T.Johnson, published in the "Complete Works of Emily Dickinson". I have both, and have read them extensively. All of my favorites are in this collection. I have read it, and carried it with me, so often that the book is becoming worn. I will replace it, soon. Since E.D. never titled her poems, the collection is indexed by each poem's first line. This has been an effective method for me.

I was never actually a fan of poetry until I encountered Emily Dickinson's poems. It seems as if she has written a poem for everyone. I strongly recomend this book, as my English teacher did to me, not only because of my love for Emily Dickinson, but for the quality of the book. It is obvious that Thomas H. Johnson, the editor, put many long hours of hard work into gathering this collection. Many of her poems were simply scribbled on little pieces of paper, which makes me wonder what kind of literary genius she must have been. With the help of this book, she has become my favorite poet, and I have learned that poetry can be strong medicine for the hurting soul. Final Harvest never leaves my side.

Don't get me wrong, I truly love a large selection of the poems in this volume. However, that is a measure of Emily Dickenson and me, not T. Johnson's collection. What makes this book better than many that are around and about, as has been mentioned, is the lack of editing to her poems--something that has always bothered me. In this regard, the content of the poems is better than many others, however there are other issues of note.

This is, of course, an abridged collection. As such, we are forced to rely on the opinion of another. Granted this is common enough with poetry collections, but that doesn't change the very nature of each person having differing interests. There is no way to know if the ones he leaves out are just as good or even better, from each individuals perspective, without going to more comprehensive texts.

Regardless, I do have one gripe with this book that is unrelated to the above pettiness. The method of dating each poem seems silly to me. The reason is that they are all claimed to be from one of several (if memory serves 3) years separated out over several decades. That and there are two listings of dates for each poem, which I don't recall off hand why they did that, and it may serve some purpose, but it's not useful information if when these poems were written can only be pinned down to plus or minus five-ten years. I can't blame Johnson for this as I imagine that is as close as is known, but, by the same token, the dates could have been left out so that it doesn't detract from the actual poetry.

All in all I would recomend this book, but I might suggest getting a more complete version instead (so long as it is unedited--Emily hated it when people wanted to edit her poems, and I think that we should respect that).

There are Emily Dickinson's greatest poems, most of which my guess is , have in one way or another been anthologized. There is her complete oeuvre of 1775 poems, a large volume indeed. I am not a Dickinson scholar and I found myself a bit lost with such a large number of poems to search through for new gems.
This present volume edited by the dean of Dickinson scholars purports to choose of the total oeuvre the very best of her work.
I truly appreciate this as a volume of this kind can extend my knowledge and appreciation of her poetry in a way which is most economical and helpful to me.

This is the best collection/selection of Emily Dickinson's poems I have ever found. They're selected from a complete collection. What's special about this book is that none of the poems are edited, as is done in many other collections of her works - and excellent choices are made for which poems to include. Emily often used simple dashes at the ends of her lines, and this selection is true to her originals - and she never put titles on her poems, or indented lines - as many other collections of her poems have the audacity to do - as if the editors of those works knew better than this greatest poet the English language has ever known.

Everyone who aims for the ultimate, the elusive, and the exquisite, ought to pack. The edition is affordable, durable, well-organized, comprehensive . . . and produced with care NOT to alter the form or format of the poems . . . which for some dreadful reason a lot of folks seem to feel compelled to do . . .

more importantly . . . all that white witchcraft still dazzles

For those whose aquiantance with the Belle of Amherst is limited to the classroom edition - i.e., There is no Frigate Like a Book, et al., look again. Dickenson really is the epitome of the rugged individualist - a free spirit - in ways surprisingly opposed to her contemporary, Whitman, she arrives at similar conclusions going no further than her garden. She is the inward sojourner - at home in the harshest tensions and conflicts of the psyche - where her distinctly feminine sensitivity speaks truth in "slant" - as she qualifies her enormous insight.

Most haunting: 'Success is counted sweetest', 'To learn the Transport by the Pain', 'My life closed twice before its close', and, "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -". Dickenson laments our sovereign anguish, our exile from the immediate truth or the comprehensive immediacy of truth, the quest for which her poems articulate an urgent hunger enveloped in alternately the most naturistically ambient references or stonily direct terms.