Customer Reviews

The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library)

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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?

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.

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?

NOTE: This is not a 1-star review for Emily Dickinson. She is one of the greatest poets of all time, and should be read by everyone who loves poetry (and even those who don't).

That said, this is a terrible edition. I was shocked when I opened it in a bookstore, looking to show a friend one of her poems I had just been talking about, to discover that the punctuation had been completely modified. The meanings of some of her best poems hinge on varying interpretations of Dickinson's eccentric punctuation, and to change it seems to me one of the great crimes against poetry. I am especially disappointed because Modern Library normally puts out such excellent editions, but this one is just awful.

Emily Dickinson is a genius and great poet, but this isn't the way to experience her work. Dickinson's distinctive punctuation and capitalization are "corrected"; the effect is maybe a smoother read but one far less rich in implications and possibilities. The division of the poems employed here , and in many of the older collections ("Life," "Nature," "Love," "Time and Eternity") are not Dickinson's, and are not very useful in experiencing the poems. In my opinion, this volume omits many of Emily's best poems and includes some of her least interesting/ daring. Of course, there can be many varying opinions as to what Emily's best work was, but since all of her poems are collected in one manageable volume there's no need to let someone else decide that for you. As another reviewer has said, the Johnson "Complete Poems" volume is what you want.

This is a superb edition of Dickinson's poems. It is "reader friendly" with updated punctuation (which purists may not like) with an excellent selection. The Billy Collins introduction is outstanding, being highly informative and entertaining without any pretensions whatsoever. He adds great insight into Dickinson's use of common meter, language, metaphor, and other techniques. Grab a bottle of water and an apple and spend a great afternoon or two with this exceptional volume.