Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $13.17 You Save: $8.82 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.63 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Book Review: One of the greatest of all writers of poetry in English
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the standard and authoritative collected edition of Emily Dickinson's poems. It is a book that will stay with you for the rest of your life. I can think of no finer writer of poetry in English who manages to invest so short and simple a construction - no more than a couple of lines in some cases - with such emotional force. I say 'simple', but her poems are simple only in a deceptive sense. An unfinished poem like "A letter is a joy of earth/ It is denied the gods -" (that's the whole poem) says more about the joy of constructing prose than any number of effusive efforts from the Romantics.Miss Dickinson has suffered from having been appropriated by the rather dreary crowd of 'cultural critics' who cannot grasp that a work of art tells us primarily not about the social mores of the time it was written in but about the human spirit. She is especially vulnerable to this sort of irrelevant sophistry, having lived as a recluse for much of her life and thus being ripe for 'interpretation' that is nothing more than a recitation of modern political sensibilities. That's a shame, and it certainly shouldn't put you off reading her. So far as I'm concerned, there is no one - not even Shakespeare, not even Jane Austen or Dickens - whom I read more frequently, and with greater pleasure and benefit.
Book Review: A prism which captures the white light of reality
Summary: 5 Stars
Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has observed, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.
Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world.
Book Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
Emily Dickinson is an poet that has poems that are usually taken the wrong way. This book is an excellent way for people to understand the meaning of the poetry by Emily Dickinson. I personally enjoy poetry, and I especially think that Emily Dickinson is a very profound poet. She is one of my favorites. This book is an excellent way to start out in poetry if you have not paid any attention to poetry before. It is also an EXCELLENT way for people who are poetry lovers to expand your horizon.Book Review: Not What Your Femi-Nazi Profs Say It Is!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've spoken to any number of people lately who are totally turned off to Emily Dickinson by their feminist professors and vow never to open her again. I tell them that they are making a mistake. Dickinson appeals to me -- a wicked,unreconstructed, non-feminist, white male -- because she writes passionate, pithy, witty poems that are not restricted by the sort of asphyxiating mediocrity that binds Adrienne Rich et al. Even if Dickinson is imprisoned in a Women Writers course, she should not be confused with the company she thereby keeps. She's a wonderful poet, and like Jane Austen, doesn't need any special pleading to be placed among the greats.Book Review: Blasphemous! Erotic! Brilliant!
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't think of "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson" as simply a volume of poetry. Rather, it seems to me to be the uninhibited testament of a latter-day prophetess; it reads like the visions of a rare mind who pierced through the prisons of convention, and who dared to record what she perceived. Forget any preconceptions you may have had about Dickinson, and start reading the book. As a whole, this collection is a stunning exploration of many themes and images: the world of nature, metaphysics, human emotion, and more. And throughout, these short verses radiate with psychological insight.
And if you read with the attentiveness that these poems deserve, you will discover many treasures. I have been a particular fan of Dickinson's "blasphemous" verses, in which she deconstructs the conventions of mainstream religiosity, and of her erotic poems, which celebrate the sensuous delights of the human and nonhuman worlds. Check out such gems as #324 ("Some keep the Sabbath going to Church-- / I keep it, staying at Home") or #339 ("My Cactus--splits her Beard / To show her throat"). Dickinson is full of surprises, all written in a style that is stunning and subtly seductive.
Dickinson writes, "Exhilaration--is within-- / There can no Outer Wine / So royally intoxicate / As that diviner Brand" (#383). But if you must rely on an "Outer Wine," dip into the "Complete Poems" and get high on Emily. It's an addiction that's good for you.