Mention Books Toward Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
| Original Title: | Final Harvest: Poems |
| Edition Language: | English |
Emily Dickinson
Paperback | Pages: 331 pages Rating: 4.28 | 1781 Users | 67 Reviews
Itemize Based On Books Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
| Title | : | Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems |
| Author | : | Emily Dickinson |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 331 pages |
| Published | : | by Little, Brown & Co. (first published January 1st 1961) |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Classics. Fiction. Literature. 19th Century |
Description In Pursuance Of Books Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
I grew up with Emily Dickinson. I mean her house was nearby in Amherst; I passed it all the time and it was spooky. You had this image of her, right? This is the old vision: a batty old spinster, shut up in her attic, writing her loopy little ditties. She was portrayed as a sort of idiot savant: "Look at what this naif came up with all by herself!" I knew that story when I was very young. I liked her poems when I was very young, too; they work for young people. They're short and rhythmic and they make you feel funny. Anyway, I would pass her place and distinctly feel her white-nightgowned ghost looking out a high window at me.I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf
None of this was accurate, of course, except probably for the ghost part; Dickinson was nothing like an idiot savant. A recluse, sure, but not a primitive. She worked very hard on her poetry; she read other poets; she marketed herself cleverly. She knew exactly what she was doing. Those poems read like someone dropped them on the floor and they shattered, but every syllable, every jarring dash, was obsessed over. They're great because she made them great.
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!
I reread her all the time nowadays. She's on my (ludicrously short) stack of favorite poetry, and when you have a minute to kill Whitman will not work but Dickinson will. It's funny, as many times as I've read her, her poems still shock. They're so immediate, you know? Vital. There is artifice but it's completely buried; what shows is a furious insistence on herself. It's playful - of course it's playful, with that singsong tetrameter - my friend Meghan almost ruined everything by pointing out that most of Dickinson's poems can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme - playful and seductive. But there's this feeling under it, a sort of drawing aside of the sheer of the world, right? There's danger.
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies—
The first time I got high I had this sudden, awing, vertiginous feeling: my gosh, there's been a whole world under this one this whole time, and no one told me until now. There's a whole reality, I thought, more savage and magical than what I've been gliding over. We'd ducked behind some hedges in Amherst to smoke my first bowl. Looking up and coughing that smoke into the night, I realized - I know this sounds made up but it's true - that we were on Emily Dickinson's front lawn. She was with me then too, ghostly in white, nodding at me not from the attic but from her study: yes. Savage, and magical.
Rating Based On Books Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
Ratings: 4.28 From 1781 Users | 67 ReviewsCrit Based On Books Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
It took me two months to make it through this 320pg book: a collection of 575 of Dickinson's best poems. Only after I read a biography of her (Richard Sewall's) and only after I was a third of the way through this book did my brain finally "get" how to read her and receive her.When I read a book I feel like I spend time with the author. For me, spending time with Emily is awe-inspiring, scary, gut-wrenching, humbling, breathtaking, and fascinating. There's something very other-worldly about herA perfect collection to acquaint yourself with her poems, which are a secret language of their own. The brevity and dissonant rhymes bring about a unique music. Her musings upon nature, love, and death seem simplistic when stated plainly but upon closer inspection (like natural wonder itself) the depth of her thoughts can astonish and enlighten. Pure genius. Her poetry should be re-read again and again.
Emily's poetry is incandescent.
The AGO has an exhibition of Emily Carr's work that I've seen twice (with different friends) recently, and it just reminds me that I used to sometimes get her and her fellow Emily mixed up. But the most I went through this selection the more I though maybe I wasn't wrong to have them paired up in my head. They both have a kind of intensity that put them out of step with many of their contemporaries, and their 'careers' both suffered at the time due to their gender. They both have periods that I
This book is not the complete poems written by Emily Dickinson but feature some of her more well-known poems. It's a good starting place if you're just getting into Dickinson's work.
Some of the most powerful, hair-raising, dynamic, brutal, vivid, imaginitive, ghostly, intense, sheerly dialectical poetry ever. She has a knack, not at all uncommon among great writers, to seem accessible and surface-level beautiful while being almost unbearably challenging and provocative once engaged with. A genius, no questions asked. If I had to bring, like, 5 books with me to the moon I think she would have to accompany whatever else I brought. She stands up to re-reading (really the
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