EMILY DICKINSON: WILD NIGHTS: SELECTED POEMS selected and introduced by Miriam Chalk One of the most extraordinary poets of any era, American poetess Emily Dickinson wrote a huge amount of poetry (nearly 1800 poems). This book ranges from her early work to the late pieces, and features many of Dickinson's most famous pieces. This new edition includes many new poems. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 - May 15, 1886) was born in Amherst, MA. Much of her later life was led in privacy, in the family home in Massachusetts. For some, she was a recluse, famous among locals for wearing white clothes, seldom travelled, preferred correspondence to meeting people in the esh, and was known for talking to visitors thru a door. She wrote nearly 1800 poems, but only a few were published during her lifetime. The poetry of Emily Dickinson is among the strangest, the most compelling and the most direct in world literature. There is nothing else quite like it. Dickinson writes in short lyrics, often just eight lines long, often in regular quatrains, but often in irregular lines consisting of two half-lines joined in the middle by a dash (such as: ''Tis Honour - though I die' in "Had I presumed to hope"). Her subjects appear to be the traditional ones of poetry, blocked in with capital letters: God, Love, Hope, Time, Death, Nature, the Sea, the Sun, the World, Childhood, the Past, History, and so on. Yet what exactly is Dickinson discussing? Who is the 'I', the 'Thee', the 'we' and the 'you' in her poetry? This is where things become much more ambiguous. Dickinson is very clear at times in her poetry, until one considers deeper exactly what she is saying - but this ambiguity is one of the hallmarks and the delights of her art. Includes an Introduction, bibliography, notes. ISBN 9781861713636. www.crmoon.com
Author
Emily Dickinson was an American poet who, despite the fact that less than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime, is widely considered one of the most original and influential poets of the 19th century. Dickinson was born to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence. Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet. For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/emily-di...
