Tag: Emily Dickinson
Books of poems: gwallter’s top 10
For want of shelf space, I’m having to lay new books horizontally, on top of earlier books. They threaten to warp and then turn solid, like sedimentary rocks. Soon I’ll need to have another cull. I doubt, though, whether the censor will make much of an impression on the three-shelf-long poetry collection. Books of poems […]
Emily Dickinson’s ‘What care the Dead’
When I’m distracted or glum I often reach for the poems of Emily Dickinson. I’ve an old copy of Thomas H. Johnson’s complete edition, published in this country by Faber. It’s less of a book and more of a box. With its stocky build and 770 pages it looks like a box of postcards. You […]
On sparrows
Obituaries lift the heart. They’re the part of any newspaper or magazine to turn to first if you want to cheer yourself up by reading about the positive side of human nature. At the moment, when the news pages resemble an unending nightmare by Hieronymus Bosch, that’s especially true. Last week I read on Twitter […]
Emily Dickinson’s reticent volcano
It’s taken a long time for Emily Dickinson to come out. During her lifetime (1830-86) only ten of her roughly 1,800 extant poems were published, some of them without her knowledge. After her death her manuscripts lay disregarded by all but a few. It was not till 1955 that anything close to a complete edition […]