Poems

The weekly clusters of poems are an integral part of this project, so we have embedded them in the weekly blog posts. But they can certainly be enjoyed alone. You can read them through this tab, where the pages also link back to the blog post to which they are attached.

Because we cannot date the composition of Dickinson’s poems with any certainty, we have taken some latitude on what poems we are including. Our pool encompasses all the poems  Dickinson’s two modern editors, Thomas Johnson and Ralph Franklin, date to 1862. As for the clusters of poems. we allow themes or issues that emerge from the Week in History or the Week in Biography, or information about a literary trend or one of the amazing letters that Dickinson wrote to guide the selection.

In every case, we identify the poems by first lines and give the Franklin and Johnson numbers. Because we want to privilege the manuscripts that Dickinson wrote, we place an image of the manuscript at the top of the page, followed by a literal transcription, the link to the Emily Dickinson Archive page (which contains lots of information), and the poem’s publication history.

We are eager to hear from you if this way of presenting Dickinson’s work allows for a deeper comprehension of its richness and resonance.