The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Paperback(2000 Modern Library Paperback Edition)

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Overview

Emily Dickinson lived as a recluse in Amherst, Massachusetts, dedicating herself to writing a "letter to the world"—the 1,775 poems left unpublished at her death in 1886. Today, Dickinson stands in the front rank of American poets. This enthralling collection includes more than four hundred poems that were published between Dickinson's death and 1900. They express her concepts of life and death, of love and nature, and of what Henry James called "the landscape of the soul." And as Billy Collins suggests in his Introduction, "In the age of the workshop, the reading, the poetry conference and festival, Dickinson reminds us of the deeply private nature of literary art."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780679783350
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 11/14/2000
Series: Modern Library Classics Series
Edition description: 2000 Modern Library Paperback Edition
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 452,078
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Virtually unknown as a poet in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) is now recognized as one of the most unaccountably strange and marvelous of the world’s great writers. Unique in their form, their psychic urgency, and their uncanny, crystalline power, her poems represent a mind unlike any other to be found in literature.

Billy Collins is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York and Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Winter Park Institute of Rollins College, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Read an Excerpt

Today Emily Dickinson is recognized not only as a major poet of the American nineteenth century but also as one of the most intriguing poets of any place or time, in both her art and her life. The outline of her biography is well known. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and, except for a few excursions to Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, spent her entire life there, increasingly limiting her activities to her father's house. "I do not cross my Father's ground to any House or Town," she wrote, referring to a personal reclusiveness that was noticeable even to her contemporaries. In the front corner bedroom of that house on Main Street, Dickinson wrote over 1,700 poems, often on scraps of paper and on the backs of grocery lists, only a handful of which were published in her lifetime and then anonymously. She was known to give poems to friends and neighbors, often as an accompaniment to the cakes and cookies she baked, sometimes lowering them from an upstairs window in a basket. Her habit of binding groups of poems together into little booklets called fascicles might indicate she felt her poems were presentable, but most of her poems never went farther than her desk drawer where they were discovered by her sister after Dickinson's death in 1886 of kidney failure. In her lifetime, her poetry remained unknown, and although a few small editions of her poems were published in the 1890s, it was not until 1955 that a reliable scholarly edition appeared, transcribing the poems precisely from the original manuscripts and preserving all of Dickinson's typographical eccentricities (see Note). Convincingly or not, she called publication "the auction of the mind" and compared the public figure to a frog croaking to the admiring audience of a bog.

It is fascinating to consider the case of a person who led such a private existence and whose poems remained unrecognized for so long after her death, as if she had lain asleep only to be awakened by the kiss of the twentieth century. The quirky circumstances of her life have received as much if not more commentary than the poems themselves. Some critics valorize her seclusion as a form of female self-sufficiency; others make her out to be a victim of her culture. Still others believe that her solitariness has been exaggerated. She did attend school, after all, and she maintained many intimate relationships by letter. Moreover, it was less eccentric in her day than in ours for one daughter—she had a brother who was a lawyer and a sister who married—to remain home to run the household and assist her parents. Further, all writers need privacy; all must close the door on the world to think and compose. But Dickinson's separateness—which has caused her to be labeled a homebody, a spinster, and a feminist icon among other things—took extreme forms. She was so shy that her sister Lavinia would be fitted for her clothes; she wore only white for many years ("Wear nothing commoner than snow"); and she rarely would address an envelope, afraid that her handwriting would be seen by the eyes of strangers. When asked of her companions, she replied in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself that my father bought me."

However tempting it is to search through the biographical evidence for a solution to the enigma of Emily Dickinson's life, we must remember that no such curiosity would exist were it not for the poems themselves. Her style is so distinctive that anyone even slightly acquainted with her poems would recognize a poem on the page as an Emily Dickinson poem, if only for its shape. Here is a typical example:

'T is little I could care for pearls
Who own the ample sea;
Or brooches when the Emperor
With rubies pelteth me;
Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
Or diamonds, when I see
A diadem to fit a dome
Continual crowning me.

Table of Contents

Contents
introduction xxvii
poems.
1890.
prelude
book i.
life.
success 
“our share of the night to bear. . .” 
rouge et noir 
rouge gagne 
“glee! the great storm is over. . .” 
“if i can stop one heart from
breaking. . .” 
almost! 
“a wounded dear leaps highest. . .” 
“the heart asks pleasure first. . .” 
in a library 
“much madness is divinest sense. . .” 
“i asked no other thing. . .” 
exclusion 
the secret 
the lonely house 
“to fight aloud is very brave. . .” 
dawn 
the book of martyrs 
the mystery of pain 
“i taste a liquor never brewed. . .” 
a book 
“i had no time to hate, because. . .” 
unreturning 
“whether my bark went down at sea. . .” 
“belshazzar had a letter. . .” 
“the brain within its groove. . .” 
book ii.
love.
mine 
bequest 
“alter? when the hills do. . .” 
suspense 
surrender 
“if you were coming in the fall. . .” 
with a flower
proof 
“have you got a brook in your
little heart?” 
transplanted 
the outlet 
in vain 
renunciation 
love’s baptism 
resurrection 
apocalypse 
the wife 
apotheosis 
book iii.
nature.
“new feet within my garden go. . .” 
may-flower 
why? 
“perhaps you’d like to buy a flower. . .” 
“the pedigree of honey. . .” 
a service of song 
“the bee is not afraid of me. . .” 
summer’s armies 
the grass 
“a little road not made of man. . .” 
summer shower 
psalm of the day 
the sea of sunset 
purple clover 
the bee 
“presentiment is that long shadow on
the lawn. . .” 
“as children bid the guest good-night. . .” 
“angels in the early morning. . .” 
“so bashful when i spied her. . .” 
two worlds 
the mountain 
a day 
“the butterfly’s assumption-gown. . .” 
the wind 
death and life 
“’twas later when the summer went. . .” 
indian summer 
autumn 
beclouded 
the hemlock 
“there’s a certain slant of light. . .” 
book iv.
time and eternity.
“one dignity delays for all. . .” 
too late
astra castra 
“safe in their alabaster chambers. . .” 
“on this long storm the
rainbow rose. . .” 
from the chrysalis 
setting sail 
“look back on time with kindly eyes. . .” 
“a train went through a burial gate. . .” 
“i died for beauty, but was scarce. . .” 
troubled about many things 
real 
the funeral 
“i went to thank her. . .” 
“i’ve seen a dying eye. . .” 
refuge 
“i never saw a moor. . .” 
playmates 
“to know just how he suffered would
be dear. . .” 
“the last night that she lived. . .” 
the first lesson 
“the bustle in a house. . .”
“i reason, earth is short. . .” 
“afraid? of whom am i afraid?” 
dying 
“two swimmers wrestled on the spar. . .” 
the chariot 
“she went as quiet as the dew. . .” 
resurgam 
“except to heaven she is nought. . .” 
“death is a dialogue between. . .” 
“it was too late for man. . .” 
along the potomac 
“the daisy follows soft the sun. . .” 
emancipation 
lost 
“if i shouldn’t be alive. . .” 
“sleep is supposed to be. . .” 
“i shall know why when time is over. . .” 
“i never lost as much but twice. . .” 
poems.
1891.
“my nosegays are for captives. . .” 
book i.
life.
“i’m nobody! who are you?” 
“i bring an unaccustomed wine. . .” 
“the nearest dream recedes,
unrealized. . .” 
“we play at paste. . .”
“i found the phrase to every thought. . .” 
hope 
the white heat 
triumph 
the test 
escape 
compensation 
the martyrs 
a prayer 
“the thought beneath so slight a film. . .” 
“the soul unto itself. . .” 
“surgeons must be very careful. . .” 
the railway train 
the show 
“delight becomes pictorial. . .” 
“a thought went up my mind today. . .” 
“is heaven a physician?” 
the return 
“a poor torn heart, a tattered heart. . .” 
too much 
shipwreck 
“victory comes late. . .” 
enough 
“experiment to me. . .” 
my country’s wardrobe
“faith is fine invention. . .” 
“except the heaven had come so near. . .” 
“portraits are to daily faces. . .” 
the duel 
“a shady friend for torrid days. . .” 
the goal 
sight 
“talk with prudence to a beggar. . .” 
the preacher
“good night! which put the candle out?” 
“when i hoped i feared. . .” 
deed 
time’s lesson 
remorse 
the shelter 
“undue significance a starving
man attaches. . .” 
“heart not so heavy as mine. . .” 
“i many times thought peace had come. . .” 
“unto my books so good to turn. . .” 
“this merit hath the worst. . .” 
hunger 
“i gained it so. . .”
“to learn the transport by the pain. . .” 
returning 
prayer 
“i know that he exists. . .” 
melodies unheard 
called back 
book ii.
love.
choice 
“i have no life but this. . .” 
“your riches taught me poverty. . .” 
the contract 
the letter 
“the way i read a letter’s this. . .” 
“wild nights! wild nights!” 
at home 89
possession 
“a charm invests a face. . .” 
the lovers 
“in lands i never saw, they say. . .” 
“the moon is distant from the sea. . .” 
“he put the belt around my life. . .” 
the lost jewel 
“what if i say i shall not wait?” 
book iii.
nature.
mother nature 
out of the morning 
“at half-past three a single bird. . .” 
day’s parlor 
the sun’s wooing 
the robin 
the butterfly’s day 
the bluebird 
april 
the sleeping flowers 
my rose 
the oriole’s secret 
the oriole 
in shadow 
the humming-bird 
secrets 
“who robbed the woods. . .” 
two voyagers 
by the sea 
old-fashioned 
a tempest 
the sea
in the garden 
the snake 
the mushroom 
the storm 
the spider 
“i know a place where summer strives. . .” 
“the one that could repeat the
summer day. . .” 
the wind’s visit 
“nature, rarer uses yellow. . .” 
gossip 
simplicity 
storm 
the rat 
“frequently the woods are pink. . .” 
a thunder-storm 
with flowers 
sunset 
“she sweeps with many-colored brooms. . .” 
“like mighty footlights burned the red. . .” 
problems 
the juggler of day 
my cricket 
“as imperceptibly as grief. . .” 
“it can’t be summer,—that got through. . .” 
summer’s obsequies 
fringed gentian 
november 
the snow 
the bluejay 
book iv.
time and eternity.
“let down the bars, o death!” 
“going to heaven!” 
“at least to pray is left, is left. . .” 
epitaph 
“morns like these we parted. . .” 
“a death-blow is a life-blow to some. . .” 
“i read my sentence steadily. . .” 
“i have not told my garden yet. . .” 
the battle-field 
“the only ghost i ever saw. . .” 
“some, too fragile for winter winds. . .” 
“as by the dead we love to sit. . .” 
memorials 
“i went to heaven. . .” 
“their height in heaven comforts not. . .” 
“there is a shame of nobleness. . .” 
triumph 
“pompless no life can pass away. . .” 
“i noticed people disappeared. . .” 
following 
“if anybody’s friend be dead. . .” 
the journey 
a country burial 
going 
“essential oils are wrung. . .” 
“i lived on dread; to those who know. . .” 
“if i should die. . .” 
at length 
ghosts 
vanished 
precedence 
gone 
requiem 
“what inn is this. . .” 
“it was not death, for i stood up. . .” 
till the end 
void 
“a throe upon the features. . .” 
saved! 
“i think just how my shape will rise. . .” 
the forgotten grave 
“lay this laurel on the one. . .” 
poems.
1896.
“’tis all i have to bring today. . .” 
book i.
life.
real riches 
superiority to fate 
hope 
forbidden fruit (i) 
forbidden fruit (ii) 
a word 
“to venerate the simple days. . .” 
life’s trades 
“drowning is not so pitiful. . .” 
“how still the bells in steeples stand. . .” 
“if the foolish call them ‘flowers’. . .” 
a syllable 
parting 
aspiration 
the inevitable 
a book 
“who has not found the heaven below. . .” 
a portrait 
i had a guinea golden 
saturday afternoon 
“few get enough,—enough is one. . .” 
“upon the gallows hung a wretch. . .” 
the lost thought 
reticence 
with flowers 
“the farthest thunder that i heard. . .” 
“on the bleakness of my lot. . .” 
contrast 
friends 
fire 
a man 
ventures 
griefs 
“i have a king who does not speak. . .” 
disenchantment 
lost faith 
lost joy 
“i worked for chaff, and earning wheat. . .” 
“life, and death, and giants. . .” 
alpine glow 
remembrance 
“to hang our head ostensibly. . .” 
the brain 
“the bone that has no marrow. . .” 
the past 
“to help our bleaker parts. . .” 
“what soft, cherubic creatures. . .” 
desire 
philosophy 
power 
“a modest lot, a fame petite. . .” 
“in bliss, then, such abyss. . .” 
experience 
thanksgiving day 
childish griefs 
book ii.
love.
consecration 
love’s humility 
love 
satisfied 
with a flower 
song 
loyalty 
“to lose thee, sweeter than to gain. . .” 
“poor little heart!” 
forgotten 
“i’ve got an arrow here. . .” 
the master 
“heart, we will forget him!” 
“father, i bring thee not myself. . .” 
“we outgrow love like other things. . .” 
“not with a club the heart is broken. . .” 
who? 
“he touched me, so i live to know. . .” 
dreams 
numen lumen 
longing 
wedded 
book iii.
nature.
nature’s changes 
the tulip 
“a light exists in spring. . .” 
the waking year 
to march 
march 
dawn 
“a murmur in the trees to note. . .” 
“morning is the place for dew. . .” 
“to my quick ear the leaves conferred. . .” 
a rose 
“high from the earth i heard a bird. . .”
cobwebs 
a well 
“to make a prairie it takes a clover. . .” 
the wind 
“a dew sufficed itself. . .” 
the woodpecker 
a snake 
“could i but ride indefinite. . .” 
the moon 
the bat 
the balloon 
evening 
cocoon 
sunset 
aurora 
the coming of night 
aftermath 
book iv.
time and eternity.
“this world is not conclusion. . .” 
“we learn in the retreating. . .” 
“they say that ‘time assuages’. . .” 
“we cover thee, sweet face. . .” 
“that is solemn we have ended. . .” 
“the stimulus, beyond the grave. . .” 
“given in marriage unto thee. . .” 
“that such have died enables us. . .” 
“they won’t frown always,—some
sweet day. . .” 
immortality 
“the distance that the dead have gone. . .” 
“how dare the robins sing. . .” 
death 
unwarned 
“each that we lose takes part of us. . .” 
“not any higher stands the grave. . .” 
asleep 
the spirit 
the monument 
“bless god, he went as soldiers. . .” 
“immortal is an ample word. . .” 
“where every bird is bold to go. . .” 
“the grave my little cottage is. . .” 
“this was in the white of the year. . .” 
“sweet hours have perished here. . .” 
“me! come! my dazzled face. . .” 
invisible 
“i wish i knew that woman’s name. . .” 
trying to forget 
“i felt a funeral in my brain. . .” 
“i meant to find her when i came. . .” 
waiting 
“a sickness of this world it most
occasions. . .” 
“superfluous were the sun. . .” 
“so proud she was to die. . .” 
farewell 
“the dying need but little, dear. . .” 
dead 
“the soul should always stand ajar. . .” 
“three weeks passed since i had
seen her. . . 
“i breathed enough to learn
the trick. . .” 
“i wonder if the sepulchre. . .” 
joy in death 
“if i may have it when it’s dead. . .” 
“before the ice is in the pools. . .” 
dying 
“adrift! a little boat adrift!” 
“there’s been a death in the opposite
house. . .” 
“we never know we go,—when we are
going. . .” 
the soul’s storm 
“water is taught by thirst. . .” 
thirst 
“a clock stopped—not the mantel’s. . .” 
charlotte brontë’s grave 
“a toad can die of light. . .” 
“far from love the heavenly father. . .” 
sleeping 
retrospect 
eternity 















 

Reading Group Guide

1. Dickinson never published any of her poetry during her lifetime; her work was discovered after her death. As Billy Collins notes in his Introduction, "It is fascinating to consider the case of a person who led such a private existence... as if she had lain asleep only to be awakened by the kiss of the twentieth century." What conclusions can you draw about the relationship of Dickinson's privacy during her life and the nature and texture of her art?

2. Dickinson's poetry continues to be extremely influential and important for twentieth-century readers; she remains one of the most widely read American poets to this day. What accounts for this remarkable, enduring popularity, in your view? What makes her poetry seem, to so many, so contemporary? What influence or legacy do you think her work has had or left?

3. Considering Dickinson in relation to some of the exemplary poetry of her time (for instance, Walt Whitman), what features seem to distinguish Dickinson's work? Are there contemporary poets that you would compare in some way to Emily Dickinson?

4. What innovations-stylistic or otherwise-do you find or notice in Dickinson's poetry? What themes or motifs seem to recur in her work, and what do these signify for you?

5. Which individual poems in this volume do you find most compelling and affecting? Which poems do you find most difficult, obscure, or hard to penetrate?

6. Billy Collins notes that Dickinson's poetry is particularly effective in its ability to "compress wide meaning into small spaces." Discuss this feature of her work in relation to poetry in general.

7. How do you think Dickinson's identity as a woman-in nineteenth-century America-plays into her art?

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