| Whenever I visit a library, I always check to see what books they have on hand of Dickinson’s poetry. Recently, I was subbing at a local high school, and the library only had one Dickinson book in their collection – but it was a great one to have! At the time, I wasn’t able to check for other books they had that would have included some of the poet’s works – i.e. anthologies and/or other collections of poetry – but as I said, the one tome on the shelf was first-rate, Cristanne Miller’s Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them. From the Harvard University Press: “Widely considered the definitive edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems, this landmark collection presents her poems here for the first time ‘as she preserved them,’ and in the order in which she wished them to appear. It is the only edition of Dickinson’s complete poems to distinguish clearly those she took pains to copy carefully onto folded sheets in fair hand—presumably to preserve them for posterity—from the ones she kept in rougher form. It is also unique among complete editions in presenting the alternate words and phrases Dickinson chose to use on the copies of the poems she kept, so that we can peer over her shoulder and see her composing and reworking her own poems.” |  |
One nice feature of the book – which other “complete” editions do not include – is that alternative word and line choices Dickinson considered are printed on the right margins of the pages (see examples in the pics below). Plus, there is an appendix with interesting notes from the editor about many of the poems.
By the way, that school now has two Dickinson books in their library’s collection. While I was there the first time I subbed, I noticed that the bibliotecha had a “Free Little Plant Library,” so the second time I subbed there I brought in a donation, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life – you can see it there in the pics below.
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