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    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics)
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics)
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics)
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    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics)

    By Emily Dickinson

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    Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American poet who wrote an incredible amount of poems. Having lived mostly as a recluse, it was only after her death that Dickinson gained popularity as one of America's greatest poets. This version of Dickinson's Complete Poems includes a table of contents.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherReadOn
    Release dateMay 4, 2017
    ISBN9782377870653
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics)
    Author

    Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life, but today is considered to be one of the most influential poets in American history.

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    Reviews for The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics)

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    • 4/5
      Gorgeous and melancholy. Some pieces were of course more beautiful than others, but I cannot fathom anyone not loving at least ONE of her poems.
    • 5/5
      I once decided to read through this list of 100 Significant books--there were only 3 women on that list: Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Emily Dickinson. Many would name her as the greatest women poet, and there are few rivals for the title of best American poet. She's definitely a personal favorite of mine. I have more than one edition of Emily Dickinson's poetry: A collection of selected poetry in hardcover, much loved, and a recently acquired ebook of the complete poems. I do recommend this edition--but with a caution. This is perhaps not the first exposure you should have to Dickinson--or to poetry. I think poetry, like classical music, improves enormously upon repetition. I remember once not much liking classic music. But a music appreciation class was required to graduate from my college, so I took it. And you know, I found that say, Bach, was a composer I appreciated much more upon repetition. Dickinson, I found to my surprise in the complete edition, isn't as familiar as I thought. She's much, much more prolific than I thought. There are, 1,775 poems in this complete edition. That's right--over a thousand. Nor are all her poems as deeply steeped into the culture as say Keats--or even Frost. Dickinson was ahead of her time and her works only trickled down slowly. She published only a handful of poetry in her life time. A few years after her death in 1886 an edition of little more than a hundred of her poems was published--and heavily edited to suit the tastes of the time. There are poems here that weren't published until 1961!They're all short--often just a few lines, half a page--the longest isn't very long--just a few pages. This means this book will defeat you if you try to read it cover to cover. Mind you, I did fine doing that with Keats and Frost--but somehow I found Dickinson harder, more enigmatic than I expected. And since the poems are in chronological order... well, her earliest poem is, would you believe it? A not very good Valentine's poem. Not the best introduction to her. I'm still giving this book five stars--because what I loved, I loved. And I suspect what I didn't love, I may love yet. I really can't just pick out favorites here--the list would just go on and on. Although I have a soft spot for "Why Have They Shut Me Out of Heaven" since it was introduced to me at the Julliard recital of a young coworker--to Aaron Copland's setting. I do recommend you get his cycle of 12 Dickinson poems if you like classical music at all. There is a gorgeous recording with Leontyne Price of an orchestral rendition of 8 of them. And if you're not a big fan of poetry but want to get a taste of it, perhaps an edition of only selected poetry would be the best place to start. It's just I so quickly got glutted. There's so much here. Here's a short one I found striking I'm still mulling over:177Ah, Necromancy Sweet!Ah, Wizard erudite!Teach me the skill,That I instil the painSurgeons assuage in vain,Nor Herb of all the plainCan Heal!(Published 1929)Uh... did Dickinson just wish she could practice black magic on an enemy? I didn't just read that, did I? I don't see any references to the history and politics of the day, and little that can be gleaned of her personal life. But there are riches here to be discovered no slim little volume can offer.
    • 5/5
      My own copy of this is the original hardcover brought out by Little Brown in the early 1970's. The Thomas Johnson edition is the only one to have; others, earlier, tidied up the remarkable poems of this writer. This edition contains them all, from the sweet nature poems that made me hate her when I was 11 and memorizing poetry, to the unflinching and often erotic poetry that came in such a rush in the 1860's to her pen. (and were then written and faircopied and tucked away in little booklets). Her work is a jolt to the heart at its best. (and at its worst, trivial and coy. But, my god, nearly 2000 poems?).
    • 5/5
      Dickinson is arguably the greatest poet in the history of the language; her 1776 poems, give or take a few, are so concentrated they require the same time commitment for reading as, say, Shakespeare's collected plays. She made out of the humble ballad form (or hymnody's "common measure") an entirely new vehicle, so that it is hard to write ballad form uninfluenced by Dickinson, just as it is nigh impossible to write iambic pentameter uninfluenced by Shakespeare. Like Jane Austen in size--and in both writing at tiny desks, for tiny women--she like Austen revolutionized her chosen literary form. I read her, three or four poems a day, for a year. A very fine teacher of mine (a well-known critic and reviewer) read all her poems in a couple months--and all her critics. He was not as impressed as I was, I think because he did not commit the necessary time--and ear. Her poems on specific natural phenomena--natural creatures, the weather, the dawn--are unsurpassed. One of her greatest poem evokes the Blue Jay, a mean bird: "No Brigadier throughout the Year / So civic as the Jay..." After describing him as a good neighbor, buddy of snow and winter's severity, Dickinson spells out her theological position, why she never attended the Congregational Church her brother Austin built diagonally across the street. For the Jay: "His character--a Tonic--/ His future, a Dispute--/Unfair an Immortality / That leaves this Neighbor out." Talk about universalism. ED includes even the unkindly, but neighborly Jay among the Saved.
    • 5/5
      My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to seeIf Immortality unveil A third event to me,So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell.Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.I've never before read a work by an author that so completely encapsulated everything that I was feeling and wanted to say but didn't have the poetic verve to express. Emily Dickinson's words are like lyrics in a song. Instantly expressive and vibrant they are cloaked with hidden meaning comprehensible only by those who understand the subject upon which she is writing. There is virtually no human experience that escapes the reach of her pen.You either love her poems or hate them but I fail to believe there is a middle ground.
    • 5/5
      “I taste a liquor never brewed” by Emily DickinsonI taste a liquor never brewed –From Tankards scooped in Pearl –Not all the Vats upon the RhineYield such an Alcohol!Inebriate of air – am I –And Debauchee of Dew –Reeling – thro' endless summer days –From inns of molten Blue –When "Landlords" turn the drunken BeeOut of the Foxglove's door –When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –I shall but drink the more!Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –And Saints – to windows run –To see the little TipplerLeaning against the – Sun!Inebriated by poetry"I taste a liquor never brewed" a poem by E. DickinsonFor me, this is an hymn to poetry and what is sacred about the act of writing. I read line after line as an invocation to beauty in all its natural forms until I got drunk with it, until I, the reader, was able to reach the heavens and join its inhabitants, Seraphs and Saints, along with Emily, who is writing from there.In this sense, I guess that we, the readers who are able to share beauty through words, are rewarded with the admittance in Dickinson's house of possibility and poetry.The poem read also as an hymn for me because of its musicality and rhyme which I became aware of when I first read the poem out loud. The way the words sang by themselves came as a surprise, and the lack of punctuation, only the dashes and the capital letters to emphasise some words, made the poem more open and infinite.Analysing stanza by stanza, the poem starts with a reference to a certain liquor, which is a strange one, because it was never brewed and because its vastness wouldn't fit into such a huge river as the Rhine. There's also the reference to the ancient age of this liquor, because the Rhine, along with the Danube, appeared as important rivers in historical texts during the Roman Empire.So, going forward, this strange alcohol, makes the " I " in this poem inebriated. I understand this " I " as the writer, in this case, Emily. She speaks of herself being drunk with this strange liquor, a liquor which comes from dew, air and summer days melted in endless blue skies. As I see it, in this second stanza, Emily is describing the beauty of the natural world as overwhelming, she is dizzy, intoxicated with it, and she drinks it in the inns of Nature.And in the third stanza she stresses out this last idea even more, because the more the inhabitants of this natural world, the bee, the foxglove, the butterfly, are denied by foreign "Landlords", emphasised by quotation marks, the more she drinks of this natural liquor, the more inebriated she becomes.As for the interpretation of these Landlords, I take it as if they were the real world, the rationality, Emily's house of prose. The ones who call the imagination back to earth and out of this world of poetry and possibility.The last stanza is for me, the most difficult to analyse. Emily is intoxicated by the beauty of nature and ultimately, of poetry, but she keeps drinking and drinking in it, until the whole act of writing becomes sacred. I understand that she reaches heaven in the Biblical sense, and salvation if I dare say. I'll risk it by saying that this "Tippler" might be Jesus, leaning against this sun, this shinning light, waiting for her to reach out for her destiny, her fate, her mission in life, which is to write, to become a poet.And just another conclusion after rereading the whole thing again.I also think, that the metaphor of liquor and inebriation is not a casual one. If you think of men drinking in inns and socialising in the XIXth century, you might wonder how a reclusive person as Emily might view this kind of activity. Surely she might have disapproved of someone getting drunk, and this poem might also be a criticism to such behaviour and at the same time, she elevates something she finds ugly or negative to an utterly magnificent and celestial act, the act of writing, proving its capacity to transform the dull world of reality into a beautiful fan of possibilities.
    • 5/5
      This book contains the best of Emily Dickenson. It is one of my favorites; because I love her simple and solitary poems.
    • 5/5
      How does one review Emily? One of a kind.
    • 5/5
      If I were shipwrecked on a desert island, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson is definitely one of the books I would swim back to the scuttled ship to bring back with me to the shore. I would look for the Complete Works of Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson's poems, and of course, a book on how to survive on a desert island.
    • 4/5
      Please do not mistake my relatively low rating (3.5 stars) as a judgment on Dickinson's achievements. My rating is soley based on the edition on my bookshelf, edited by Thomas Johnson way back in 1960. I'll quote Chrisopher Benfey in the New York Review of Books: "There were problems with the Johnson edition, and they increased over time. Forced to work from photostats of many of the poems, Johnson made errors of transcription. Manuscripts unknown to him, generally variants of already familiar poems, continued to surface. And scholarly debates about the dating and the arrangement of poems on the page proliferated. For some time it has been evident that a new edition of Dickinson's poems was needed." And a new edition has appeared -- 10 years ago! I need to get off my duff and go out and do the right thing, "because I could not shop for death."
    • 5/5
      There's an Emily Dickinson poem for every kind of day, and every life event.Indispensable.
    • 5/5
      It was wasted on me in High School... Now I would willingly sit down and read a few poems. The poems of Emily Dickinson, not much else needs to be said.
    • 5/5
      The Soul...softer than snow, faster than light.
    • 5/5
      My divine emily dickinson who deems more understanding even today!
    • 5/5
      My grandfather gave me this book for my birthday or Christmas or something when I was about 10 or 11.It's brilliant. I used to read one poem every night before going to bed.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful revelation: This is NOT the Emily Dickinson that you remember from your tenth-grade English class. Be prepared to pay attention . . .
    • 5/5
      One of the great works of modern editorship, an Emily Dickinson who can breathe, pause, look, dance, commune. Read with Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson, it's like plunging into blue morning.

    Book preview

    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) - Emily Dickinson

    THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON

    CONTENTS

    PREFACE.

    First Series

    Second Series

    Third Series

    Index of First Lines

    TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

    As is well documented, Emily Dickinson's poems were edited in these early editions by her friends, better to fit the conventions of the times. In particular, her dashes, often small enough to appear as dots, became commas and semi-colons.

    In the second series of poems published, a facsimile of her handwritten poem which her editors titled Renunciation is given, and comparing this to the printed version gives a flavor of the changes made in these early editions.

    —-JT

    First Series

    PREFACE.

    The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called the Poetry of the Portfolio,—something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind. Such verse must inevitably forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though brought curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness.

    Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with the institution and by the leading people of the town. On these occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence. The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion, and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if she had dwelt in a nunnery. For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla.

    This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found,—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.

    —-Thomas Wentworth Higginson

    This is my letter to the world,

        That never wrote to me, —

    The simple news that Nature told,

        With tender majesty.

    Her message is committed

        To hands I cannot see;

    For love of her, sweet countrymen,

        Judge tenderly of me!

    I. LIFE.

    I.

    SUCCESS.

    [Published in A Masque of Poets

    at the request of H.H., the author's

    fellow-townswoman and friend.]

    Success is counted sweetest

    By those who ne'er succeed.

    To comprehend a nectar

    Requires sorest need.

    Not one of all the purple host

    Who took the flag to-day

    Can tell the definition,

    So clear, of victory,

    As he, defeated, dying,

    On whose forbidden ear

    The distant strains of triumph

    Break, agonized and clear!

    II.

    Our share of night to bear,

    Our share of morning,

    Our blank in bliss to fill,

    Our blank in scorning.

    Here a star, and there a star,

    Some lose their way.

    Here a mist, and there a mist,

    Afterwards — day!

    III.

    ROUGE ET NOIR.

    Soul, wilt thou toss again?

    By just such a hazard

    Hundreds have lost, indeed,

    But tens have won an all.

    Angels' breathless ballot

    Lingers to record thee;

    Imps in eager caucusv Raffle for my soul.

    IV.

    ROUGE GAGNE.

    'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!

    If I should fail, what poverty!

    And yet, as poor as I

    Have ventured all upon a throw;

    Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so

    This side the victory!

    Life is but life, and death but death!

    Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!

    And if, indeed, I fail,

    At least to know the worst is sweet.

    Defeat means nothing but defeat,

    No drearier can prevail!

    And if I gain, — oh, gun at sea,

    Oh, bells that in the steeples be,

    At first repeat it slow!

    For heaven is a different thing

    Conjectured, and waked sudden in,

    And might o'erwhelm me so!

    V.

    Glee! The great storm is over!

    Four have recovered the land;

    Forty gone down together

    Into the boiling sand.

    Ring, for the scant salvation!

    Toll, for the bonnie souls, —

    Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,

    Spinning upon the shoals!

    How they will tell the shipwreck

    When winter shakes the door,

    Till the children ask, "But the forty?

    Did they come back no more?"

    Then a silence suffuses the story,

    And a softness the teller's eye;

    And the children no further question,

    And only the waves reply.

    VI.

    If I can stop one heart from breaking,

    I shall not live in vain;

    If I can ease one life the aching,

    Or cool one pain,

    Or help one fainting robin

    Unto his nest again,

    I shall not live in vain.

    VII.

    ALMOST!

    Within my reach!

    I could have touched!

    I might have chanced that way!

    Soft sauntered through the village,

    Sauntered as soft away!

    So unsuspected violets

    Within the fields lie low,

    Too late for striving fingers

    That passed, an hour ago.

    VIII.

    A wounded deer leaps highest,

    I've heard the hunter tell;

    'T is but the ecstasy of death,

    And then the brake is still.

    The smitten rock that gushes,

    The trampled steel that springs;

    A cheek is always redder

    Just where the hectic stings!

    Mirth is the mail of anguish,

    In which it cautions arm,

    Lest anybody spy the blood

    And You're hurt exclaim!

    IX.

    The heart asks pleasure first,

    And then, excuse from pain;

    And then, those little anodynes

    That deaden suffering;

    And then, to go to sleep;

    And then, if it should be

    The will of its Inquisitor,

    The liberty to die.

    X.

    IN A LIBRARY.

    A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is

    To meet an antique book,

    In just the dress his century wore;

    A privilege, I think,

    His venerable hand to take,

    And warming in our own,

    A passage back, or two, to make

    To times when he was young.

    His quaint opinions to inspect,

    His knowledge to unfold

    On what concerns our mutual mind,

    The literature of old;

    What interested scholars most,

    What competitions ran

    When Plato was a certainty.

    And Sophocles a man;

    When Sappho was a living girl,

    And Beatrice wore

    The gown that Dante deified.

    Facts, centuries before,

    He traverses familiar,

    As one should come to town

    And tell you all your dreams were true;

    He lived where dreams were sown.

    His presence is enchantment,

    You beg him not to go;

    Old volumes shake their vellum heads

    And tantalize, just so.

    XI.

    Much madness is divinest sense

    To a discerning eye;

    Much sense the starkest madness.

    'T is the majority

    In this, as all, prevails.

    Assent, and you are sane;

    Demur, — you're straightway dangerous,

    And handled with a chain.

    XII.

    I asked no other thing,

    No other was denied.

    I offered Being for it;

    The mighty merchant smiled.

    Brazil? He twirled a button,

    Without a glance my way:

    "But, madam, is there nothing else

    That we can show to-day?"

    XIII.

    EXCLUSION.

    The soul selects

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