The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson

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Book Reviews of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Book Review: Zero at the Bone
Summary: 5 Stars

Of course other women of literature suffered something similar during the nineteenth century. What I wonder is, who is being misread, ignored or denied today?

Anyway, suffice it to say that this IS the definitive one-volume collection of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. It includes all the 1,775 poems that she wrote in her lifetime, and they are presented here just as she wrote them with only some minor corrections of obvious misspellings or misplaced apostrophes. Johnson has retained the sometimes "capricious" capitalization, and preserved the famous dashes.

There is a subject index, which I found useful, and an index of first lines, which is invaluable.

Dickinson can be playful...

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

...she can be sarcastic...

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see -
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

[Alas, the Amazon.com editor does not support italics. The words "see" and "Microscopes" are italicized above, and it really does make a difference!]

...and grave...

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

...and observant...

I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it's true -
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate, a Throe -

...and profound...

Love reckons by itself - alone -
"As large as I" - relate the Sun
to One who never felt it blaze -
Itself is all the like it has -

..and desperate...

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

...and self aware...

I meant to have but modest needs -
Such as Content - and Heaven -
Within my income - these could lie
And Life and I - keep even -

...and even radical...

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you're straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -

...and much more.

She is a poet of strikingly apt and totally original phrases imbued with a deep resonance of thought and observation, especially on her favorite subjects, life, death and love. She can be cryptic and her references and allusions are sometimes too private for us to catch. She can also be amazingly terse. But the intensity of her experience and the "Zero at the Bone" emotion displayed in this, her "letter to the World/That never wrote to me -" are second to none in the world of letters. Unlike Shakespeare, who mastered the psychology of people in places high and low, Dickinson mastered only her own psychology, and yet through that we can see, as in a mirror, ourselves.

Summary of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

The book was compiled from Thomas H. Johnson's hard-to-find variorum from 1955. While some explanatory notes would have been helpful, it's a prodigious collection, showcasing Dickinson's intractable obsession with nature, including death. Poem 1732, which alludes to the deaths of her father and a onetime suitor, illustrates her talent:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If 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.

The musicality of her punctuation and the outright elegance of her style--akin to Christina Rossetti's hymns, although not nearly so religious--rescue the poems from their occasional abstruseness. The Complete Poems is especially refreshing because Dickinson didn't write for publication; only 11 of her verses appeared in magazines during her lifetime, and she had long-resigned herself to anonymity, or a "Barefoot-Rank," as she phrased it. This is the perfect volume for readers wishing to explore the works of one of America's first poets.

Poetry Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Poetry
• United States > 19th Century