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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This is not really the edition you want., June 22, 2001
I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, the badly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't. In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to you that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ? There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows. THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.) THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.) For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems: FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound). Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
This isn't quite the letter Emily was writing to the world..., April 14, 2007
I picked up this selection of Dickinson's poems on a whim because I am a huge fan of her poetry--it simply reaches to your very soul and leaves you rapt in awe. However--I must say--that I am sorely disappointed with this edition of selected poems. As one of the other reviewers has stated, this edition has been greatly tampered with--the editors have reworked the punctuation and capitalization stylistic genius of Dickinson and bastardized it to accommodate the modern reader--but, honestly, to do this severely detracts from Dickinson's so very unique voice. Particularly, the editors employed the comma as a replacement for her frivolous usage of the dash, which left me squirming in distaste--it nearly ruins the poems in my opinion. To "fix" a poem--punctuation or otherwise--is to change the very essence behind it--I was very surprised the editors would take such strange liberties in modifying these poems. If you're a stickler about poetry, this is not the edition for you. But if you wish to simply read these poems for the sake of reading them, then you may be ok with this edition--but I still would recommend against it; you don't quite get the same sense of Dickinson's subtle and profound examinations of the world.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This is not really the edition you want., June 22, 2001
This review is from: The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library) (Hardcover)
I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, the badly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't. In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ? There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows. THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.) THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.) For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems: FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound). Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?
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