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    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third)
    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third)
    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third)
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    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third)

    By Emily Dickinson

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    Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), the reclusive and intensely private poet saw only a few of her poems (she wrote well over a thousand) published during her life. After discovering a trove of manuscripts left in a wooden box, Dickinson's sister Lavinia fortunately chose to disobey Emily's wishes for her work to be burned after death. With the help of Amherst professors, Lavinia brought her sister's gifted verse into print. It is here, in "The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson", that we witness her singular poetic depth and range of style. Collected are the first three series of her posthumous publishing career coming out respectively in 1890, 1891, and 1896. The myth that surrounds Dickinson's life is enhanced by the ethereal quality of her poetry. With the coming of New Criticism in the 1930's and 40's, Dickinson experienced unprecedented posthumous acclaim, solidifying her place in American letters. Dickinson's idiom is as varied as her meter, and her unconventional use of punctuation, metaphor, and image make her an innovator of the lyric akin to many of the early modernists. These poems examine love, death, and nature with an effortless yet complex tone and voice. Now one of the most read and admired American poets, Dickinson's poetry continues to resonate with readers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateFeb 1, 2012
    ISBN9781420945706
    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third)
    Author

    Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson was an American poet. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community.

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    Reviews for The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third)

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      She wasn't appreciated by her family or the public of that day, but contrary to what I once assumed, this did not make her bitter. Poetry tends to be either traditional and soothing or modern and frayed, and Emily is definitely traditional and soothing. She bore no ill will to anybody, regardless of her social circumstances. They may not have liked her, but she liked them.............I mean, there can be, there can be a certain sadness there, but it is such a shy and tender sadness, that it isn't at all like the way people talk. These days we are used to people shouting, and sometimes you forget what a shy girl is really like.
    • 4/5
      I am marking this as finished but really I had to return it to the library before I was done. I read more than half and have read many of these poems before in other collections & anthologies so I feel comfortable with my rating.
    • 5/5
      A collection of the best of the best. Emily Dickinson is one of the most original poets of her time, and refused to follow the straight jacket rules often imposed on poets; as a result, she was not published widely in her lifetime (though she did have one or two poems in a magazine). Since that time, her original style has become much more appreciated, and this book collects a small sampling of her work. A good starting point for anyone who isn't familiar with Dickinson, because it gives a wide range of her works, and many of her all time best are included.
    • 1/5
      This edition advertises itself as "The Orginal Published Version" - which means, of course, that it's the version that was edited all to heck by a couple of literary hacks in New York. Until I actually tried to sit down and read it, I hadn't realized just how much the changes did matter. Poor Emily.
    • 5/5
      Dickinson is one of my favorite poets. I love the convenience of this collection.
    • 5/5
      A collection of the best of the best. Emily Dickinson is one of the most original poets of her time, and refused to follow the straight jacket rules often imposed on poets; as a result, she was not published widely in her lifetime (though she did have one or two poems in a magazine). Since that time, her original style has become much more appreciated, and this book collects a small sampling of her work. A good starting point for anyone who isn't familiar with Dickinson, because it gives a wide range of her works, and many of her all time best are included.
    • 4/5
      I am deplorably little read in poetry. I have ambitions to read more of this highly visual and emotional literary art form, one with amazing precedents and history, but I rarely do. I bought this collection of poems by one of my country's esteemed poets many years back, and have finally taken the time to read her poetry. Despite my limited expertise, I enjoyed her work. The poems were evocative of nature and eternity, and expressed intense emotions. They felt very intimate, but appealed to universal feelings. Her poems about nature were lush and full of awe, and revealed her deep love of the outdoors. Many of the natural elements described also functioned as metaphors for her feelings or ideas about life and love. My particular favorites were the poems that explored death and life and the mysteries of eternity. I have analyzed much more fiction and novels than poetry, and I know I am lacking in terminology, but I felt the rhythm of her meters (according to others she often used tetrameter rather than pentameter) and the effect of her abrupt breaks and pauses. According to one writer I unearthed online, Dickinson used "diamond hard language", and I find that a beautiful descriptor that accurately captures a sense of her words.The book I own is a complete collection of her poetry. I would love to examine these poems more deeply someday, with other people who are interested in delving into intricacies of subject and form. Whether I will actually do so is unknown; in the meantime, I am delighted that I finally acquainted myself with the work of an amazing poet. She has inspired me to read more poetry. I heard a speaker say once that people get too worked up about poetry, that they view it as a chore when it is an experience that should be felt and enjoyed. I am trying to drop my apprehensions and enjoy poetry, even if it means that I don't understand or get everything out of it that I can. Emily Dickinson was a lovely starting point.
    • 2/5
      Apparently Emily Dickinson is just not for me. I just found it boring and unengaging (with the occasional neat use of words that wasn't frequent enough to interest me).
    • 5/5
      Utterly brilliant.

      Although it's marked by time - and what really isn't? - in a way which isn't my marred, modern cup of tea, the sheer potency of Dickinson's language, rhythm, coinage of words and non-rhymes win me over completely, and take me to another level totally.

      I shan't say more on the poetry itself, but the imagery painted is sharp, veering from "the usual" in a way that has lived for more than a hundred years and will continue living forever, I'm sure.

      While this collection does not contain all of her poems, it is annotated with short sentences on names, places and references, e.g. to passages from the christian bible and other poets.

      This collection's only real flaw: it's too short.
    • 5/5
      Not sure how much "editing" Emily's friends and relatives contributed to this collection, virtually all of which are poems which Emily did not publish or even title before her death in 1886. For example, the stark perplexity of "Going to Heaven!"And it takes but little understanding to come to the realization that Emily's decisions about publication were utterly compromised by the reversals, hypocrisies, and gravity of the Civil War. And the relentless fraud of the Churches who prayed through all the suffering on all sides.Finally, my readings largely concur with those who "see" that Emily Dickinson spoke robust and bold truth, with naked beauty, and unrelenting kindness. Example for all who suffer curiosity and compassion:Going to heaven!I don't know when,Pray do not ask me how,--Indeed, I'm too astonishedTo think of answering you!Going to heaven!--How dim it sounds!And yet it will be doneAs sure as flocks go home at nightUnto the shepherd's arm!Perhaps you're going too!Who knows?If you should get there first,Save just a little place for meClose to the two I lost!The smallest "robe" will fit me,And just a bit of "crown";For you know we do not mind our dressWhen we are going home.I'm glad I don't believe it,For it would stop my breath,And I'd like to look a little moreAt such a curious earth!I am glad they did believe itWhom I have never foundSince the mighty autumn afternoonI left them in the ground.
    • 3/5
      The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson contains a sizeable sample of the total works of the reclusive poet, who only came to prominence after her death. Containing 593 poems separated into five different themes, roughly a third of her overall productivity, this collection gives the reader a wonderful look into the talent of a woman who hid her art not only from the world but also her own family. Besides nearly 600 poems of Dickinson’s work, the reader is given a 25 page introduction to the poet and an analysis of her work by Dr. Rachel Wetzsteon who helps reveal the mysterious artist as best as she can and help the reader understand her work better. Although neither Wetzsteon’s introduction and analysis nor Dickinson’s work is wanting, the fact that this collection gives only a sample of the poet’s work is its main and only flaw.
    • 2/5
      This book is formatted well, like most of the Barnes & Noble classics. There’s a scholarly introduction, a brief biography with timeline, specific words defined on the page when necessary (sometimes there’s some overkill on this point, but it’s hard to know what audience will know what), and supplementary materials at the end, including questions for discussion or deeper contemplation. The poems themselves are divided into five sections based on theme (although for the life of me I’m still not sure what the final section “The Single Hound” is supposed to be about, and I think most of these poems found here could have easily fit into the earlier topics).However, I couldn’t rate this book any higher because as much as I thought I would love Emily Dickinson’s poetry, I didn’t. Her poems were too short for me to get into them or appreciate a deeper meaning in most cases. I found that I would start to get a bit into a poem and it didn’t last long enough to sustain interest or really tell a story. Out of this whole book of hundreds of her poems, I only truly enjoyed a handful. I didn’t find her style very interesting at all -- her words and descriptions were not vivid, lovely, or quite frankly, poetic. I don’t particularly care that she doesn’t follow a specific form or that she doesn’t always rhyme, but it would annoy me when she starts to rhyme but stops half way or does a half-hearted attempt at rhyming. It took me more than a year to finish this book and towards the end I just wanted it to be done already. Other people may love her, but Dickinson’s poetry is just not to my taste, and I much prefer my Edna St. Vincent Millay.

    Book preview

    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Series First through Third) - Emily Dickinson

    THE COLLECTED POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON

    (SERIES FIRST THROUGH THIRD)

    BY EMILY DICKINSON

    A Digireads.com Book

    Digireads.com Publishing

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4521-8

    Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4570-6

    This edition copyright © 2012

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    FIRST SERIES

    PREFACE

    I. LIFE.

    II. LOVE.

    III. NATURE.

    IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.

    SECOND SERIES

    PREFACE

    I. LIFE.

    II. LOVE.

    III. NATURE.

    IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.

    THIRD SERIES

    PREFACE

    I. LIFE.

    II. LOVE.

    III. NATURE.

    IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.

    FIRST SERIES

    Edited by two of her friends

    MABEL LOOMIS TODD AND T.W. HIGGINSON

    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 caucus

    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

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