Product Description

A beautifully illustrated gift book exploring the flowers and poems of the beloved "Belle of Amherst"

A woman who found great solace in gardens, Emily Dickinson filled her poetry with references to her flowers. Now, in Emily Dickinson's Gardens, author Marta McDowell invites poetry and gardening lovers alike to explore the words and wildflowers of one of America's best-loved poets.

Each chapter of this illustrated book follows a different season in the gardens, conservatories, and Amherst environs where the poet tended, collected, and drew inspiration from flowers.

"Here is a brighter garden" where you will discover:

• Excerpts from Dickinson's poetry and letters
• Historical details about the poet's life, emphasizing her horticultural interests
• Plus: Instructions on how to create an Emily Dickinson garden of your own, including plans, design ideas, plant sources, and growing tips

Customer Reviews (4)

good historical garden review
Was a great book for research, but lacked photos that could have given the book more punch

Emily Dickinson's Gardens: A Celebration of a Poet and Gardener
I am very pleased with the quality of the book.Other than a black marking on the back paper cover, the book is in new condition.It is a good read.

A Charming Gardening Companion
Ms. McDowell is a delightful writer. Her book on Emily Dickinson's Gardens kept me reassuring company this spring as I worried my way through my first seed growing experiments. I kept it next to my seed growing trays by my computer where I sat and worked everyday. Her conversational stylewas reassuring, informative and entertaining. Somehow her book managed to say the right thing at the moment when I needed to read it.

A Celebration Indeed!
The wonder of this book is that the author has done a fabulous job of conmbining biography, poetry and gardening into one terrific volume.

The descriptions of Dickinson's life are intimate and homey; reading it, you feel like you're spending a few hours with a friend.

And McDowell does a great job of helping us understand the role that gardening played in both Emily's life and her poetry by providing a lot of specific details that bring Emily and her home to life.

As a gardener myself, I was extremely impressed with McDowell's gardening knowledge.She's included a number of tips and techniques that will be useful to both novice and experienced gardeners.

Bottom line: this is just a wonderful book, and one that I'll be giving to many of my poetry and gardening friends. ... Read more

Product Description

Though there have been many female poets who have glorified English Poetry with their enchanting creations, Emily Dickinson is such a unique poet that it is very difficult to place her in any single tradition-she seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Her customary four-line stanzas, ABCB rhyme schemes, and alternations in iambic meter between tetrameter and trimeter, furnish her poetic form that is derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns, but Dickinson so thoroughly appropriates the forms-interposing her own long, rhythmic dashes designed to interrupt the meter and indicate short pauses-that the resemblance seems quite faint. Her subjects are often parts of the topography of her own psyche; she explores her own feelings with painstaking and often painful honesty but never loses sight of their universal poetic application; one of her greatest techniques is to write about the particulars of her own emotions in a kind of universal homiletic or adage-like tone.Her poems reach the-deepest part-of one's mind and heart.

Product Description
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Kindle Edition. ... Read more

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Comprising 597 poems of the Belle of Amherst, whose life of the Imagination formed the transcendental bridge to modern American poetry. ... Read more

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Cliffs Test Preparation Guides help students prepare for and improve their performance on standardized tests ACT Preparation Guide CBEST Preparation Guide CLAST Preparation Guide ELM Review GMAT Preparation Guide GRE Preparation Guide LSAT Preparation Guide MAT Preparation Guide MATH Review for Standardized Tests MSAT Preparation Guide Memory Power for Exams Police Officer Examination Preparation Guide Police Sergeant Examination Preparation Guide Police Management Examinations Preparation Guide Postal Examinations Preparation Guide Praxis I: PPST Preparation Guide Praxis II: NTE Core Battery Preparation Guide SAT Preparation Guide SAT II Writing Preparation Guide TASP Preparation Guide TOEFL Preparation Guide with 2 cassettes Advanced Practice for the TOEFL with 2 cassettes Verbal Review for Standardized Tests Writing Proficiency Examinations You Can Pass the GED Cliffs Quick Reviews help students in introductory college courses or Advanced Placement classes Algebra I Algebra II Anatomy & Physiology Basic Math and Pre-Algebra Biology Calculus Chemistry Differential Equations Economics Geometry Linear Algebra Microbiology Physics Statistics Trigonometry Cliffs Advanced Placement Preparation Guides help high school students taking Advanced Placement courses to earn college credit AP Biology AP Calculus AB AP Chemistry AP English Language & Composition AP English Literature & Composition AP United States History Cliffs Complete Study Editions are comprehensive study guides with complete text, running commentary and glossary Chaucer's Prologue Chaucer's Wife of Bath Hamlet Julius Caesar King Henry IV, Part I King Lear Macbeth The Merchant of Venice Othello Romeo and Juliet The Tempest Twelfth Night See inside back cover for listing of Cliffs Notes titles Registered trademarks include: GRE, MSAT, the Praxis Series, and TOEFL (Educational Testing Service): AP, Advanced Placement Program, and SAT (College Entrance Examination Board); GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Council); and LSAT (Law School Admission Council.) Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very helpful look at Emily Dickinson's and her poems
Numerous times I have found Cliffs notes helpful.The ones I have purchased have always been written by people that are experts in the field covered by the book, and that is true of this book too.It is filled with eye-opening insights.

I like Cliffs Notes because for the time spent, they yield a lot of information.Sure, I can read the 821 page "The Life of Emily Dickinson" by Richard B. Sewall for helpful background on her life (matter of fact I do have the book and have read portions, and it is quite good), but what if I want a well-written summarized biographical essay that I can read in a few minutes and then get to the poems?This Cliff's Notes book has it, pages 5 through 11.

The book also deals with the texts of the poems and letters, Dickinson's ideas, and her poetic methods. All of this is essential introductory material.

The author then dives into the poems, analyzing them in sections that correspond to Dickinson's 5 major subject matter areas: (1) Nature; (2) Poetry, Art and Imagination; (3)Friendship, Love and Society; (4) Suffering and Growth; and (5) Death, Immortality and Religion. A generous number of poems is included in each section.

Next the author gives one line summaries for 40 more poems.

There are also Questions for Review, a Bibliography, and an Index of First Lines.

In some circles, Cliffs Notes have a reputation as a quick and easy way to "read" a classic for a class in high school or college.Read Cliffs Notes on Hamlet and you can skip reading the play but sound like you really did read Shakespeare.There is a warning in caps on the inside of the front cover that the book is not intended as a substitute for the text itself.

But I'm not in any class.I'm on my own, and I find Cliffs Notes very often more helpful than obviously scholarly-type works, for a quick but detailed and accessible overview of a subject,

This book is an excellent, thorough and helpful overview.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in Emily Dickinson's poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
Josephine Jenkins, better known as JJ, is in her senior year at Sampson Academy. She's a closet poet, a talented writer suffering from stage fright, and she's committed the ultimate lesbian faux pas - she's fallen in love with a straight girl. Kendal McCarthy is uber popular. She's the campus beauty and a cheerleader. Though she may seem to have her life figured out, she's still searching for that elusive high school experience that will help her make sense of herself before she leaves for college. When she and JJ inadvertently cross paths, their lives suddenly become a bit more interesting in ways that neither of them ever imagined. Filled with unique and witty banter courtesy of Queenie McBride, JJ's over-privileged confidant, this tale of innocent love exposes the reality of what can happen when two polar opposites collide in the most unexpected way through the poetry of Emily Dickinson. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An Excellent Read for all ages
The Trouble With Emily Dickenson is a very smartly written. I was able to identify as an adult and wish there was a book such as this one while I was trying to figure myself out.This book has a wonderful stride and protects innocence in such an honorable way. I never wanted to put it down! Young adults will be able to identify with this book very well. Regardless of your sexual orientation this book can be useful for any young adult coming into their own. I look forward to reading more of Ms. D'Arcangelo's work in the future. BRAVO!!!

The appeal of the book goes beyond teenagers
Josephine (JJ) Jenkins is an excellent student at the private Sampson Academy where she doesn't exactly fit in.She's a secret poet, but also quite obviously a lesbian, which successfully bars her from being one of the "in crowd".This doesn't concern her until she discovers that she has been assigned to tutor "the" most popular girl on campus Kendal McCarthy, campus beauty, cheerleader, leader of the "in crowd" and straight as an arrow......supposedly.Kendal is normally a good student, but poetry and how to interpret it are totally beyond her abilities.She'll do anything to pass English, including spending time in the library with JJ.As the two girls work together, they build a friendship and discover they have more in common than either thought possible.Kendal tries to help JJ gain the confidence to overcome her stage fright and bring her poetry into the open, while JJ discovers, to her horror, that she's falling hard for a girl she believes she can never have.Both girls begin to try the patience of their respective friends who can't understand why they want to spend so much time together.Confusion reigns as the girls begin to realize that they are developing more than a friendship and neither of them is sure she can deal with the situation.

The Trouble with Emily Dickenson is a humorous, yet tender, look at young love and the difficulty a teenager has dealing with being so "different" from her peers.Much of what the girls go through will strike familiar chords with women who have already passed through those experiences.It's a coming out story that can hold the attention of older readers as well as young.It has the added bonus of containing a character who keeps the story light when it could bog down in teen angst.Queenie McBride is JJ's loyal friend and an outrageously out lesbian way beyond her years in experience and attitude.As the heir to an old Virginia family, she delights in driving her parents crazy with her antics and her wild spending sprees.She may seem superficial, but her devotion to JJ is absolute and she is the first to realize that her friend may be setting herself up for a great disappointment.Everyone will wish she had a friend like Queenie.

Stories about teenagers might not appeal to older readers, but they should give this one a chance.If the reader forgets the girls' ages, then this becomes a story about discovery, friendship and self realization.It only takes a few hours to read it and you might find it's worth it.

Great Read!
This was a great read which took me through the trials and tribulations of any teenager while keeping a lighthearted tone. It also reminded me of many things I went through as a young adult. I would definitely recommend this book! ... Read more

Product Description
Keane examines Dickinson s perspectives on the role played by a supposedly omnipotent and all-loving God in a world marked by violence and pain. Keane provides close readings of many of Dickinson s poems and letters engaging God, showing how she addressed the challenges posed by her own experience and by an innate skepticism reinforced by a nascent Darwinism to the argument from design and the concept of a benevolent deity. He traces the evolving history of the Problem of Suffering from the Hebrew Scriptures, through the writings of Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, to the most recent theological and philosophical studies of the problem. Keane is interested in how readers today respond to Emily Dickinson s often combative poems about God. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Timely Book
Keane's "Emily Dickinson's Approving God - Divine Design and the Problem of Suffering" is timely due to
two ongoing wars, threats of wars, massacres, global economic disasters, poverty and starvation. The use of poetry and words of biblical greats as well as recent theological and philosophical opinions for interpretations of our religions with regard to those problems makes this a fascinating read. Famous poets focused on similar things, using familiar props such as flowers as Dickinson did in the 1800s and Frost, in using the kindred spider covered in this book. It's a book that is hard to put down; yet, when done, it is also one that calls you back.
... Read more

Product Description
A beautiful, visual biography of America's greatest woman poet, containing over 275 photographs and illustrations. Emily Dickinson left an enduring literary legacy nearly 2,000 poems yet she was so intensely private that her life is sometimes seen as one of solitary devotion to the muse. The portraits, engravings, maps, and other illustrations in The World of Emily Dickinson attest to a much broader life than is commonly thought. Polly Longsworth's graceful introductory essay portrays a young woman of unusual intelligence and wit meeting the world on her own terms, engaging with people, ideas, natural phenomena, and her nineteenth-century culture, while choosing to keep her distance from the public eye. The pictures and captions build on that essay, exploring Dickinson's immediate surroundings, the Dickinson family's active and influential public life, as well as close friends and relatives, the growing town of Amherst, and the intellectual life of the time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Beautiful book by one of the best ED scholars...
You can never go wrong buying a book by Polly Longsworth. Especially if it is about enigmatic,obstinate Emily Dickinson. Ms. Longsworth knows her subject as well as, or better than, any other active ED author. She has a common-sense approach to the famous ED obscurities and mysteries, born of decades of study and the influence of Richard Benson Sewall, Yale professor and creator of the Pulitzer-prize winning "Life of Emily Dickinson" in l974. That's the best biography of the poet we have or are ever likely to have. Polly writes well and this book shows off the Amherst of ED's era in ways that nicely complement the text and the poetry. She's also a nice person, kind to other ED researchers, both professional and amateur. Not everyone in that specialty qualifies for such a compliment. As a person who has written a play about Emily's survivors and how they struggled to get her poems published, I have had reason to correspond with lots of Dickinson buffs over a 20-year period. Polly and Sewall and William Luce, author of the play "Belle of Amherst" made room in their lives for letters from an unknown. Many others did not. This book is inexpensive, fortunately, but it is a grand addition to the library of any fan of Emily's. The fact that its creator is also a decent sort is just frosting on the cake.

A picture truly is worth a thousand words
I am a fan of old photographs, I pour over old family pictures with great zeal. The World of Emily Dickinson certainly feeds my passion. It is crammed full of wonderful pictures of the Dickinson family, their friends, and the changing and growing town of Amherst, Massachusetts. I learned more about the life of Emily Dickinson in just half an hour than I had ever known about her. It certainly shows that Dickinson wasn't the lonely recluse that I had always heard her to be. In addition to photographs, there are many facsimile reprints of letters written both by Emily Dickinson and to her. I believe this book will be very helpful to future biographers and historians. ... Read more

Product Description
A Spicing of Birds is a unique and beautifully illustrated anthology, pairing poems from one of America's most revered poets with evocative classic ornithological art. Emily Dickinson had a great love of birds--in her collected poems, birds are mentioned 222 times, sometimes as the core inspiration of the poem. However, in existing anthologies of Dickinson's work, little acknowledgment is made of her close connection to birds. This book contains thirty-seven of Dickinson's poems featuring birds common to New England. Many lesser-known poems are brought to light, renewing our appreciation for Dickinson's work.

The editors' introduction draws extensively from Dickinson's letters, providing fascinating insights into her relationship with birds. The illustrations, by late 18th century to early 20th century artists/ornithologists, are often so apt as to seem to have been created with the poems in mind. Included are beautiful watercolors by Mark Catesby, engravings of John James Audubon's paintings, illustrations by Alexander Wilson, chromo-lithographs by Robert Ridgway (curator of birds at the National Museum for some fifty years), paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and some of the earliest bird photographs by Cordelia Stanwood. The editors also discuss the development and growth of birding in the nineteenth century as well as the evolution of field guides and early conservation efforts. Brief biographies of the artists are included in an appendix. This book is an eloquent tribute to the special place held by birds in our lives and imaginations, and will make an ideal gift for both birders and poetry readers. ... Read more

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Karen Pelletier abandoned her life in New York for a professorship at Massachusetts's elite Enfield College. But she quickly learns that New England is not the peaceful enclave she had imagined--and that not even the privileged world of academia is immune to murder....

Professor Karen Pelletier's prime literary passion is poet Emily Dickinson--a passion she shares with her hotshot colleague Randy Astin-Berger. Heir apparent to the head of Enfield's English department, the pompous Randy is the campus Casanova. That is, he was--until he was found strangled with his own flashy necktie.

The last person to see Randy alive--and the first to find him dead--Karen knows she must solve the case before she becomes the prime suspect. But to do that, she must first discover the truth behind Randy's final Dickinsonian discovery--a literary bombshell that may well have been to die for....

Amazon.com Review
Karen Pelletier is the kind of person who, driving through a snowstorm,chants Emily Dickinson to herself as a talisman--"It sifts from LeadenSieves, / It powders all the Wood. / It fills with Alabaster Wool / The Wrinklesof the Road."And Joanne Dobson has done such a good job making Karena real and complex character that we happily go along for the ride. In herfirst novel, Dobson (who teaches English at Fordham University and haswritten a book about Dickinson) adds new life to the academic mystery bymaking her lead character as tough as she is smart: a working-class singlemother suddenly offered a chance to teach at the very posh Enfield Collegein Massachusetts. Professor Pelletier, who left behind a longtime lover in New York to take the job, now has to cope with men as diverse as RandyAstin-Berger (a trendy, Mick Jagger look-alike trying to live up to hisfirst name), a patrician college president sending out mixed messages,and--after Karen finds Randy strangled by his necktie in a closet--acomfortable old cop called Piotrowski. The reality of academic hysteria isperfectly captured; the crime and detection are carefully plotted; andDobson fully fleshes out Karen, her daughter Amanda, and all the rest ofher female characters so that they live with the reader long after the book is finished. --Dick Adler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Start here, then read the rest of the series
Joanne Dobson'sQuieter Than Sleep is just the wonderful beginning of an outstanding series starring Professor Karen Pelletier. Dobson has created a main character who is real, flawed, terrifically intelligent and witty, and tenacious to a fault. These books are not typical "cozies" but raise the bar. I love a lot of cozies, but Dobson's writing doesn't miss a beat. The language flows beautifully, the characters are well defined (no confusing one character with another in these books), and the story keeps me reading at all hours of the night. Dobson's are among the very few books I really CAN'T put down. So, start here, then please go on to read the rest of the series.

Strong start to a solid series
Well-developed characters and setting, and an intriguing mystery, rounded out with entertaining literary references, make this a welcome addition to the murder mystery genre.

quieter than sleep
Quieter Than Sleep - English professor Karen Pelletier has an unpleasant surprise when she opens a closet at a Christmas party and out falls the corpse of arrogant colleague Randy Astin-Berger. The usual gossip is given a twist, as speculation grows.Meanwhile, Karen is busy with a suicidal student, whose father menaces both of them.On the case is self-described "big cop" Piotrowski, who may want to have more than just a professional relationship with Karen.A second love interest comes in the form of the college president, the patrician Avery Mitchell.It all adds up to a suspenseful novel in the series.

Cluster
The heroine has a Ph.D. in English.The setting is Enfield College, fictitious,near Lowell, Massachusetts.Karen Pelletier is an authority on Emily Dickinson.Avery Mitchell is Enfield's president.Randy Astin-Berger suffers a non accidental death.

There had been a faculty party.Randy had been critical of others and had prevented at least one person from getting tenure.Detective Piotrowski is one of the officers conducting the investigation.In time he hires Karen as a researcher to clarify literary matters for the police.Avery said that all Randy had ever wanted from others was a mirror reflecting his own ideas.He, Randy, had told Karen that the department was filled with retrograde intellects and that he could further her career.

Official suspicion is aroused when events, a missing person and an attempted suicide, appear in a cluster.Randy had been reading the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher.Later Randy's office is found ransacked.Karen follows in his footsteps to stumble upon the scholarly piece of information triggering the unfortunate happenings at Enfield.The book is a good one.It is well-plotted and has rounded characters.

An Interesting Heroine You'll Enjoy
Rarely do new mystery series begin with a heroine as interesting and as well portrayed as Professor Karen Pelletier is in Quieter than Sleep.Not surprisingly, the book was nominated for an Agatha award.

Doctor Pelletier found herself pregnant as a teen in high school, and dropped out of her plans to go to Smith to marry her truck driver lover.After a difficult pregnancy and marital abuse, she puts her life together to raise her daughter as a single Mom while pursuing her academic career.Finally finding love with a cop in New York, she abandons him to follow her desire for a career to settle at tony, elite Enfield College in New England.Arriving at Enfield, she's the new kid on the English department block sharing responsibilities for 19th century American literature with an aggressive, pompous womanizer who wants to discuss more than literature with her.She finds herself attracted to all the wrong men, and attracts attention from men she would rather avoid.Ah well, back to those term papers!She's so self absorbed that she doesn't quite notice her effect on others or what is going on around her.Told from that obtuse perspective, the surrounding developments take on an opaque characteristic that makes the story more enjoyable.

As to genre, Quieter than Sleep reminded me most of Jane Langton's mysteries.But Quieter than Sleep has more action and less intellectual content than the Langton works do.I actually would have enjoyed reading more about Emily Dickinson than the book provides. Like Ms. Langton's books, there's not much mystery in Quieter than Sleep.Between the subtitle of the book and events that occurred in the first few pages, the motive and identity of the guilty party were soon evident to me.

Quieter than Sleep is quite good on academic politics, and made them seem as interesting as possible.

I was pleased to learn two new words from this book, something I cannot ever remember happening with a mystery novel before.The story is enlivened with some fine writing.The book begins with "I might as well admit it: I'm sick of desire.Of love, sex, and desire, and all their cumbersome baggage."Delightful quotes from Emily Dickinson also make their way into our heroine's thoughts.Each fine phrase makes the book stand out.

The book sets up quickly.Our heroine is being bored to death by Randy Astin-Berger, the English professor you'll love to hate, at the faculty Christmas party.His topic?Sex and literature.Within a few pages, Astin-Berger is dead meat and the lives of many at Enfield will never be the same.From there, Karen Pelletier finds herself drawn into helping resolve the mystery while assisting those who have been harmed by the events.Along the way, you'll learn some interesting perspectives on Emily Dickinson.

If I liked the book so much, why didn't I grade it as a five star effort?Basically, the plot development didn't work for me in many ways.First, the mystery should have been more mysterious for my taste.I like to have to wait until at least the second half of the book before knowing what is going on.Second, the book wastes too much time on red herrings that didn't really tempt me.Third, the police investigation seems over laden.I cannot imagine that the resources put into this case would have really been employed.Fourth, the tone is very detached.The book needed to grip the reader in the emotion of the events.It didn't.So I felt like I was reading a clever book about a murder mystery, rather than experiencing a murder mystery.

As I finished the book, I wondered about how many times academic curiosities are being explored more for the ego of the experience than for finding the truth of the circumstances.I was reminded to avoid projecting my own needs onto the facts around me. ... Read more

Product Description
The only single volume edition containing ALL of Dickinson's poems. Original gray cloth binding. xiv, 770 pages. ... Read more

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"

Poetry has often been considered an irrational genre, more expressive than logical, more meditative than given to coherent argument. And yet, in each of the four very different poets she considers here, Helen Vendler reveals a style of thinking in operation; although they may prefer different means, she argues, all poets of any value are thinkers.

The four poets taken up in this volume--Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and William Butler Yeats--come from three centuries and three nations, and their styles of thinking are characteristically idiosyncratic. Vendler shows us Pope performing as a satiric miniaturizer, remaking in verse the form of the essay, Whitman writing as a poet of repetitive insistence for whom thinking must be followed by rethinking, Dickinson experimenting with plot to characterize life's unfolding, and Yeats thinking in images, using montage in lieu of argument.

With customary lucidity and spirit, Vendler traces through these poets' lines to find evidence of thought in lyric, the silent stylistic measures representing changes of mind, the condensed power of poetic thinking. Her work argues against the reduction of poetry to its (frequently well-worn) themes and demonstrates, instead, that there is always in admirable poetry a strenuous process of thinking, evident in an evolving style--however ancient the theme--that is powerful and original.

Customer Reviews (5)

Our most eloquent poetry professor on four great English language poets
I have long enjoyed and appreciated the helpful, brilliant and clear writings of Professor Vendler, opening to even my poor understanding the means and meanings of our great poets, including The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets which bears a CD of her reading of the sonnets, selected.

In particular I read intermittently her unmatchable volume length study of Irish poet Yeats entitled Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, so reasonable, so measured, so close to her subject with affection and intelligence. For instance, see her discussion there of the poem of Leda and the Swan, and compare this with more gender-political readings, and gratefully acknowledge her scholarly approach.

So I was drawn to this present volume, simply for the section on Mr. Yeats, and discover so much more, in Dickinson, Whitman and Pope, poet I might otherwise overlook but here find deeply revealed.

Professor Vendler does require the attention of her reader as she reveals why these poets reward our greatest and most careful attention. She serves as a fine, generous and meticulous guide to the treasure concealed. Perhaps she may best be read within the context of an advanced course in English literature, of the sort no longer offered, with the loving, living presence of a patient, tireless and resilient professor, but such a dream may no longer be, and we are blessed by this book in hand, and the chance to read and to read once more the words of this great and patient professor of our poetry, armed with The Oxford Companion to English Literature or similar reference such as the Bennet for understanding the full meaning of the terms used here, terms which would have been acquired in lower level courses, terms we might not yet have upon the tip of our fingers, but which are essential for our comprehension, terms which are good to know.

Kindly, Professor Vendler brings us into this secret garden, this hidden world of knowing our literature, with great patience and delight, and we are fortunate to find her wonderful work so distilled in this slim volume. Caution is given elsewhere to pursue the New Edition of 160 pages, not the 2004 first printing, which I have now.

Above all else, read the work, the poetry, grateful for all that this good professor reveals to us within, clearly, correctly, cogently.

Please see also her study of Irish poet Seamus Heaney and her anthology of poetry, etc.

one of our great critics at her less than great
I have followed religiously book by book by Helen Vendler, both the scholar and the critic of contemporary poetry, and, much as it saddens me to say it, my feeling is that the last few book have lost a great deal of the passion and intellectual acuity that I had grown to expect from her.Perhaps this is a natural consequence of age, though perhaps not an inevitable consequence, as one of her heroes, W. B. Yeats, has shown.

Surprise! Poets are thinkers!
Vendler is very entertaining--she truly holds her reader and gets us right inside the poems themselves. That's rare among today's literary critics, an almost forgotten way of thinking about poetry.

"Even when a poem seems to be a spontaneous outburst of feeling, it is being directed as a feat of ordered language, by something one can only call thought. Yet in most accounts of the internal substance of poetry, critics continue to emphasize the imaginative or irrational or psychological or 'expressive' base of poetry; it is thought to be an art of which there can be no science."

She goes on to illustrate for us what "poetic thinking" actually is with illustrations from some of our greatest poets.

Readers of my reviews will know of my enthusiasm for Vendler's commentary on Shakespeare's sonnets The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets as well as my appreciation for Emily Dickinson as shown in my reviews of The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition and The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson (Cambridge Companions to Literature).

Vendler's treatment of Emily Dickinson is especially interesting. The great crisis in Dickinson's poetry happens when her instinctive practice of serially filled in chromatic advance encounters unavoidable fissure, fracture, rupture and abyss.

And what an opening this provides Dickinson!

Vendler guides us through the opened up strategies Dickinson employs in "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" (372; 1862); "Before I got my eye put out-" 336; 1862) and many other great poems. She is at her best, I think, in her treatment of "Renunciation - is a piercing Virtue" (782; 1863).

Poets have what they refer to as "moves," or ways of handling particular situations that come up in the writing of poetry. William Stafford has "moves" and he talks about them frequently in his writings on poetry. Some of the very best "moves" are the ones Dickinson makes--and certainly Yeats as well. Vendler as a critic is very sensitive to this. She is always on the trail and looking for the "moves" a poet is making.

Vendler's looks are convincing, even though she may not be the last word on everything and she may not always get everything exactly right.

With a good deal of literary criticism today you as a reader want to scream: "Stop! Read the poem you nitwit!"

Thank the stars, there's Vendler.

Thinking betwixt the lines: scientific rigor and received divine inspiration.
Arguably the most widely read poetry critic in the US today, Professor Helen Hennessey Vendler displays characteristic erudition in this work on Pope, Whitman, Dickinson and Yeats. Reviewing her book is as recursive as viewing a picture in a dream.

Her arguments rescue poem making from the exclusive precinct of mythical and mystical mediums yet they do not surrender it to the uncompromising demands of logical positivists. As strongly as John Hollander craves rhyme and reason, Vendler imputes intentionality. For each of the four poets she reads, she demonstrates quintessential styles in rational thought and lyrical composition without any of them sacrificing variety.

There are interesting suggestions in this book - one, for instance, is that where the prolific reader-writer-critic and her former colleague at Harvard, Harold Bloom, an acclaimed Shakespeare authority, makes assertions about poets and their poems, Vendler, a veteran Yeats scholar, produces evidence. A devotee and biographer of Irish Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, Vendler, the polymath, who holds an undergraduate degree in Chemistry, is a literary guide as accessible to the lay reader as she is to the academic. Would not Emily Dickinson have reaffirmed that Vendler's mind is wider than the sky?

An invitation to sample Vendler's resourcefulness, eloquence and control of her material in a Harvard classroom is currently posted on each of Amazon.com's web site for Vendler's books, "Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets" and "The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets and Critics." This thorough, 48-minute explication of Yeats' poem "Among School Children," an intertexture of Greek mythology, philosophy and mathematics, continues for about ten pages in Poets Thinking.

One note of caution: the first impression of this book was dated 2004 and it had 142 pages - be careful to purchase the one on this page, the `New Ed' edition that has 160 pages.

Not an Easy, but a Rewarding Read
I can't believe this book hasn't been reviewed yet. I found it a very thought-provoking insight into the techniques of these four poets. I particularly enjoyed the analyses of Whitman and Yeats, with the Pope and Dickinson running close second. This is not popularized dumbed-down literary criticism, but a rigorous examination of substantive issues. You will get out of it what you put into it.

Pope: His caricature devices include synecdoche, diminutive nicknames, scientific reduction (gold is yellow dirt), classical allusion, anticlimax (wisest, brightest, meanest), and word substitution (damned to everlasting [condemnation] fame).

Whitman: One of his devices is to state things reportorially, and then to restate them from a position of extreme empathetic identification with the things described, shifting from an emphasis on verbs to an emphasis on nouns; narrative incident turns to lyric description.

Dickinson: She gives the semblance of control by dividing a process into a series of arbitrary slots which she fills with detail, e.g a poem about a train's journey makes several stops at certain places, but other possible places it could have stopped are not mentioned. Vendler labels this "chromatic linear advance." Early on there was a definite ending in her poems, but this became more ambiguous as she got older. Also, things went from being ordered chronologically to being ordered in an emotional hierarchy.

Yeats: Overlayed images to present a vertical harmony of choral unison. Here's a typical Vendler sentence: "Yeats's bitter diptychs, though presented serially, are contrived so as to assemble themselves ultimately into a densely overwritten palimpsest." He frequently moved a single poem's mode from narration to meditation to an ode.

That's about 120 pages of densely overwritten Helen Vendler in a nutshell. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (6)

bookmarks
I like this set very much. As a matter of fact, I have purchased several sets.The pictures are lovely and the quotes from her poems fun to read again and again.

Review
I purchased these for a secret pal who loves to read but I am not sure she will appreciate these.I found the quotes difficult to understand.I think the quotes used are okay, but I think I chose the wrong bookmark set.

loved these bookmarks
I thought they were cute and very cheap they are printed on thick paper and a great value

Beautiful markers
Honestly, I just purchased these to get my total to the 25.00 minimum for free s/h but I'm glad I did. As a long-time fan of Emily, I really appreciate the artwork and the careful selection of poems that are included.Even my four year old loves them and studies each picture and asks to have the poems read to him. I plan to purchase more of these as gifts for friends and bibliophiles like myself.

Great library give-aways for National Poetry Month
These bookmarks were a great way for our library to promote National Poetry Month in April and thank our community residents for their patronage.They were perforated and separated easily; we added a label to the back that promoted our Friends of the Library group. ... Read more

Product Description
Over 100 best-known, best-loved poems by one of America’s foremost poets, reprinted from authoritative early editions. "The Snake," "Hope," "The Chariot," many more, display unflinching honesty, psychological penetration, technical adventurousness that have delighted and impressed generations of poetry lovers. No comparable edition at this price. Index of first lines.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A Terrible Edition
I ordered this text directly from the publisher for my students.Never once did the Dover Thrift folks ever mention that this is the "cleaned up" version of the poetry, that Dickinson's own syntax and punctuation had been altered by later editors.Though these edited versions were common years ago, today nobody really reads these versions of the poems except to discuss the stultifying effect that such gender and publication politics had on her work.Please note that there are many wonderful versions of Dickinson's work in print, and that these poems are NOT Dickinson's, not as rich or complex as hers, and NOT even worth a dollar.Find her poems for free online, or go ahead and buy a more worthwhile edition.SKIP THIS ONE.

censored
emily dickonson....censored. Her poems were not only the words but all those commas and punctuation marks.

This is not really the edition you want.
I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this.But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote.You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, abadly-tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food.Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food?Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended.So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems.These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson.Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, alongwith reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader.Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition.Edited byR. W. Franklin.692 pp.Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON.Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued.ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selectionof what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems.Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages.New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition.Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

Good poet, bad edition
Although Emily Dickinson is a marvelous poet, this edition is not a goodone to buy.The catalogue claims it is printed from "the earliest,most authorative editions" without noting that the earliest editionswere heavily edited, eliminating much of what makes Dickinson unusual andbrilliant.For example, another reviewer quotes from poem 258, whichshould read "There's a certain slant of light, / Winter Afternoons-- /That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes--"; the firsteditor didn't think many people would know what the word "heft"meant, so he (without Dickinson's posthumous permission) simply replacedit.Get a volume of Dickinson's poems, certainly!But not this one.

Emily Dickinson
This little gem is a treasure trove of the best of Emily Dickinson.All of her best known works are found nestled within these pages.President John Adams once gave the advice that you would never be lonely with a poetin your pocket.It is so true.I carry this little book with meeverywhere, and find myself inspired by the magic within the pages.Thepoems have been ordered in a logical way either by theme or topic. Itincludes "Hope" , "The Chariot", "March" andmy favorite, "There's a certain slant of Light on winter afternoonsthat oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes..."Buy this bookif you wear your heart on your sleeve, your passion on your paper and yoursoul on your solitude. ... Read more

Product Description
This unique anthology gathers work by eighty poets inspired by Emily Dickinson. Beginning with Hart Crane's 1927 poem “To Emily Dickinson” and moving forward through the century to such luminary Þgures as Archibald MacLeish, John Berryman, Yvor Winters, Adrienne Rich, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Amy Clampitt, William Stafford, and Galway Kinnell, Visiting Emily offers both a celebration of and an homage to one of the world's great poets.

If there was ever any doubt about Dickinson's inßuence on modern and contemporary poets, this remarkable collection surely puts it to rest. Gathered here are poems reßecting a wide range of voices, styles, and forms—poems written in traditional and experimental forms; poems whose tones are meditative, reßective, reverent and irreverent, satirical, whimsical, improvisational, and serious. Many of the poets draw from Dickinson's biography, while others imagine events from her life. Some poets borrow lines from Dickinson's poems or letters as triggers for their inspiration. Though most of the poems connect directly to Dickinson's life or work, for others the connection is more oblique.

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE
Marvin Bell
Lucy Brock-Broido
Amy Clampitt
Toi Derricotte
Lynn Emanuel
Donald Hall
Edward Hirsch
Galway Kinnell
Maxine Kumin
Archibald MacLeish
Kathleen Norris
Sharon Olds
Alicia Ostriker
Ron Padgett
Linda Pastan
Molly Peacock
Donald Revell
Adrienne Rich
William Stafford
Richard Wilbur
Charles Wright
Ray Young Bear ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Very enjoyable
The collection is inspired and intriguing. The range of emotions created in readers by the poetry of Emily Dickinson is demonstrated through the variety of thematic works presented. From the humorous (Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop, and Emily Dickinson's To-Do List) to the introspective (The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson), to the wishful (Emily Dickinson, Bismarck and the Roadrunner's Inquiry)--each gem is carefully chosen by the authors. If the reader is not familiar with Dickinson's work, this book will inspire a thorough reading of her poems. For those who know her work, the recognition of the power of her work will bring knowing smiles and memories.A note to the previous reviewer: the Billy Collins' poem, Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, is included in the collection (p. 13-14).

Emily's Visitors
An interesting thematic collection that sometimes is a homage to Emily and at other times (As in X.J. Kennedy's poem) gently pokes at the Emily cult. It seems that almost all poets pass through her writing at some point and at least take a sip if not a full glass. They really should have included Billy Collins' poem "Undressing Emily" which is funny, sad and, I think, lovingly done. ... Read more

Product Description
Intrigued by stories of the woman who lives across the street in the yellow house, a young girl eagerly accompanies her mother to the house for a piano lesson and discovers that the stories about the woman are far from true. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Love this book!
I gave this book to my daughter-in-law, who is an English teacher.The paintings are beautiful and the story touching.It's not just for children!

A fine survey of the poet's inner world comes to life
In a yellow house in Massachusetts lives a woman who hasn't left the house and grounds in nearly twenty years. She hides from strangers - and only a young girl who lives across the street has been able to befriend her. Her name? Emily Dickinson... a fine survey of the poet's inner world comes to life in a lovely picturebook form is supplemented by fine color pictures by Barbara Cooney.

Hauntingly Beautiful
I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up for my children.At first reading, I was concerned that it was a ghost story, which might be a little too scary for my three year old.I was delightfully surprised that it is more of a mystery, with a little girl (the narrator) discovering Emily Dickinson in the house across the street.Barbara Cooney's slightly primitive paintings are a wonderful accompaniament to Michael Bedard's text.But it is Emily's own poetry which is the climax of the book.This book would be an excellent accompaniament to any young person's study of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Prose that will change the way a child hears
The beauty's in the telling, and even more in the not-telling: "The road was full of mud and mirrors..." Thanks, Michael Bedard, for not talking down to children, and for an explanation of poetry that any child or adult would be better for hearing. Gorgeous prose without the overblown cloying sentiment of so many children's books.

Emily
In this story this little girl is curious about her neighbor and this letter her mother recieved.He say footprints coming from her neighbors house to her door.This neighbor hasn't left her house in 20 years.This lady is Emily.Later in the story they decide to go visit her.They went to play music for her.Emily just wanted spring that is why she asked them to play her music n the letter.The little girl keeps thinking about the mystery of Emily when spring has come.This Emily is Emily Dickinson and she is shut in the house for so long because she is writing poetry.She has the little girls mother come to play music becase it inspires her.This is a very good story and might even be true story.I enjoyed it. ... Read more

Product Description
Emily Dickinson exemplified the virtue of self-discipline. She wrote poetry largely for her own pleasure and to exercise and increase her creative talents. Very few of her poems were published during her own lifetime, yet we know that she wrote consistently--perhaps every day--over several decades. Poetry was her way of knowing herself and understanding the world. She could control and express her ideas and emotions through poetry, perhaps the most demanding form of writing.

What does it mean to be a disciplined poet? It means writing and rewriting poems until they seem to be as perfect as possible. Dickinson left behind many drafts of her poems--sometimes including alternate wordings, as if to acknowledge that her writing was still seeking perfection.

Dickinson's discipline was self-imposed. She met no publishing deadlines. She did not write for a patron who sponsored her creative efforts. She did not expect the world to acknowledge her poetry as soon as it was written. Yet now she is considered one of the greatest poets ever to have written in the English language. She valued the labor and the results of a job well done. Emily Dickinson is a model not only for writers, but for anyone who wishes calmly and determinedly to pursue a goal, even without the prospect of an immediate reward. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ideal for home schoolers
Our biography includes a section of points to ponder and suggestions to parents about how to discuss Dickinson with their children.The book also has an annotated bibliography for those interested in doing more reading and research on this great poet. ... Read more