Emily Dickinson’s Poems

This book brings us as close as we can get to how [Dickinson] presented her work… Sparing us the task of deciphering the poet’s sometimes challenging handwriting and presenting intriguing variants, this edition demonstrates why generations of writers have been galvanized by Dickinson… This edition brings us that much nearer to what this exceedingly decisive and willful writer wanted. It sweeps away distractions caused by posthumous fame, leaving us with the poems themselves… Closer than previous editions to Dickinson’s wishes, priorities and personality, Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them calls for no redundant plays, films, novels or warbling. What remains is lightning bolts of language akin to the trouvailles of Arthur Rimbaud and other powerful magicians of verse. -- Benjamin Ivry * Literary Review *
[Dickinson’s] ‘fluid’ approach to poetic composition [is] clarified in Cristanne Miller’s painstaking new edition of Dickinson’s poems. -- Christopher Benfey * New York Review of Books *
Miller chooses rightly not to number Dickinson’s poems, as previous editors have done, and allows them instead to name themselves in their first lines. More importantly, though, she does make a convincing case for Dickinson’s having wanted to preserve and organize her works as poems, to decide, for the most part, on their finished forms. -- Fiona Green * Times Literary Supplement *
Miller’s approach works well, not only to give readers agency, but also to show Dickinson’s thought process… Miller crafts an edition that artfully accommodates Dickinson’s process of continuously reworking poems. -- Meg Schoerke * Hudson Review *
Cristanne Miller’s edition of Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them is surely the best poetry book of all this past year. Who’d have expected such a surprising, new and fruitful way to read the great poet? -- Don Share * Irish Times *
Reading the volume straight through, it’s a pleasure to discover and re-discover Dickinson’s odd metaphors and strange sounds in poems that oscillate between whimsical riddle and hard-nosed philosophical meditation… Emily Dickinson’s Poems delivers. -- Micah Mattix * Washington Free Beacon *
This new edition of Dickinson’s poems attempts nothing less than to shift the center of gravity and value in present-day Dickinson studies back to the fascicles, the poet’s own ‘manuscript books.’ Miller has done the community of general readers as well as scholars a huge service in compiling this edition. -- Mary Loeffelholz, Northeastern University
A remarkable new resource in a wonderfully accessible format. This edition offers readers a print version of the manuscript poems Dickinson retained and that, Miller argues, Dickinson preserved for posterity. -- Paul Crumbley, Utah State University
Miller’s edition gives us something like the Collected Poems Dickinson might have published in different circumstances. An invaluable book for Dickinson scholars and general readers alike. -- Bonnie Costello, Boston University