Status
Available
Collection
Genres
Publication
Castle Books/Book Sales (2006), Edition: 2nd, 240 pages
Description
Fiction. Poetry. HTML: Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) was an eccentric, reclusive poet, though born to a family of good standing within their Massachusetts community. She had fewer than a dozen poems published in her lifetime, though posthumously her sister found a cache of nearly eighteen hundred, all of which have now been published. Emily's style was broke with the common forms of poetry at the time, and foreshadowed what was to come. Her work was harshly criticized when first published, but she is now considered one of the American greats..
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
240 p.; 9.54 x 1.01 inches
User reviews
LibraryThing member ironicqueery
As for as the actual book, this is a cute little volume of poems. However, I find Dickinson to be a poor poet who doesn't really mature as the years progress. The poetry is simplistic, lacks imagery, and typically dwells in death.
LibraryThing member Teresa_Pelka
We may ask ourselves a simple question: do we believe Emily Dickinson tried to tell about very exceptional Bees, Ears, or Birds, so peculiar that you write them with capital letters? After verification against manuscript resources and a few thoughts, we may come up with the answer: no, she
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definitely did not. Show Less
LibraryThing member princess-starr
Full disclaimer- I really can't properly review poetry. Mainly because I suck at scansion and meter. Language, I'm good with, but everything else...not so much.
That out of the way, I do quite like Dickinson. This is a fairly comprehensive collection, covering three years of writing (1890, 1891, and
That out of the way, I do quite like Dickinson. This is a fairly comprehensive collection, covering three years of writing (1890, 1891, and
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1896), and grouped into her four most prevalent subjects. There's a definite change in the tone of her poems from the 1890 section to 1896, and with the majority of topics (particularly anything in the Life and Eternity sections), there's a much darker tone and worldview in her writing. Of the four groupings, I really wasn't fond of the Nature poems- they were nice, but they got a little tedious and flowery (heh) for my tastes. To paraphrase Pratchett, "Apparently, the poet had liked [the garden] very much." I liked the Life and Eternity sections, pretty much because my tastes run toward the darker side. And also, I liked the collection because there's such a wide range of her poetry included here. (Because, let's be honest, "I'm nobody!" and "Because I couldn't stop for Death..." got really old the third time I had to read it for school.) It's not a bad collection, and I would recommend reading it just to get another side of Dickinson other than what gets read in school. Show Less
LibraryThing member MaureenCean
I had to read a book of poetry for a reading challenge this year. I admit to not being especially savvy when it comes to understanding the true meaning of many poems, but I took poetry in college, and I had a done decent job of explicating "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," so I figured what the
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heck. Also, my physician once told me that she had experienced gnosis, and actually wrote a book of his own regarding her spirituality and the Bible, or something along those lines. A lot of it is still barely understandable to me, but I did bookmark a number of poems that I feel I may be able to better understand and appreciate if I go back and re-read them, you know, 10 or 20 times.... Show Less
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Pages
240