The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson comprises a treasury of subtle, profound, and unforgettable verses by America￯﾿ﾽs most significant lyric poet.

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, Dickinson began life as an energetic, outgoing young woman who excelled as a student. However, in her mid-twenties she began to grow reclusive, and eventually she rarely descended from her room in her father￯﾿ﾽs house. She spent most of her time working on her poetry, largely without encouragement or real interest from her family and peers, and died at age fifty-five. Only a handful of her 1,775 poems had been published during her lifetime. When her poems finally appeared after her death, readers immedi-ately recognized an artist whose immense depth and stylistic complexities would one day make her the most widely esteemed female poet to write in the English language.

Dickinson￯﾿ﾽs poetry is remarkable for its tightly controlled emotional and intellectual energy. The longest poem covers less than two pages. Yet in theme and tone her writing reaches for the sublime as it charts the landscape of the human soul. A true innovator, Dickinson experimented freely with conventional rhythm and meter, and often used dashes, off rhymes, and unusual metaphors￯﾿ﾽtechniques that strongly influenced modern poetry. Dickinson￯﾿ﾽs idiosyncratic style, along with her deep resonance of thought and her observations about life and death, love and nature, and solitude and society, have firmly established her as one of America￯﾿ﾽs true poetic geniuses.

Includes an index of first lines


Introduction and Notes by Rachel Wetzsteon
Having received her doctorate in English from Columbia University in 1999, Rachel Wetzsteon is Assistant Professor of English at William Paterson University. She has published two books of poems, The Other Stars and Home and Away, and has received various awards for her poetry. She currently lives in New York City.

Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830, into an established and devoutly Puritan New England family. Dickinson led a reclusive life at her father￯﾿ﾽs homestead in Amherst, where she composed thousands of poems and letters, drawing inspiration from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, and others. Following the death of her father in 1874, Emily retreated further into isolation. When her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, poetry editor of the Atlantic Monthly, suggested that she alter her poetic style for the sake of commercial viability, Emily decided against publication in favor of artistic integrity. Diagnosed with Bright￯﾿ﾽs disease, a kidney disorder, Emily suffered from deteriorating health until she died on May 15, 1886.


"To enter Dickinson￯﾿ﾽs world is to step into a scary but electrifying funhouse where paradoxes serve like distorting mirrors to show us new ways of seeing just about everything: love, death, solitude, the soul. Throughout her work, opposites change places: Distance is nearness in disguise; absence is the most vital form of presence; aloneness is the greatest company there is. In several painful but illuminating poems, for example, she argues in favor of hunger and longing, maintaining that the lack that occasions desire makes the object of desire all the more precious."￯﾿ﾽfrom the Introduction by Rachel Wetzsteon