Helen Vendler

In selecting these poems for commentary the author chooses to exhibit many aspects of Dickinson's work as a poet, from her first person poems to the poems of grand abstraction, from her ecstatic verses to her unparalleled depictions of emotional numbness, from her comic anecdotes to her painful poems of aftermath. Included here are many expected favorites as well as more complex and less often anthologized poems. Taken together, this selection reveals...