Great poetry meets great reader of poetry.

Emily Dickinson was a poet I already admired, but Helen Vendler’s commentaries deepened my appreciation. In addition, they teach by demonstration how we can become better readers of poetry through emulating her careful attention to rhyme, meter, word choice, and syntax. The insights that Vendler’s reading yields not only opened poems that had been opaque to me; even in Dickinson’s relatively accessible poems, I saw much I had missed.

Vendler’s approach to Dickinson’s work is not limited to the poems themselves. She delves into the vast array of literature that Dickinson had read and internalized, including Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Keats, Wordsworth, and much more. Vendler even consulted the same edition of Webster’s Dictionary (1844) that Dickinson used, adding another layer of depth to her analysis.

Dickinson was not only a student of great writing; she keenly enjoyed nature and its seasons. She was also an astute observer of human behavior — both in those around her and in her own incandescent spirit. As Vendler writes, the result was to make her “the inventive reconciever and linguistic shaper of her perennial themes: nature, death, religion, love, and the workings of the mind and thought.”

Although Vendler suggests dipping into this book wherever one’s interest may lead, I read it consecutively. Some days, I read as many as twenty poems with commentary; other days, only one or two. Since a rough chronological order for most of her poems has been established, this gave me a feel for Dickinson’s development.

Astonishingly, this generous selection covers less than ten percent of Dickinson’s oeuvre. With the tools Vendler has shared with us, there is much to discover. ( )

Emily Dicksinson's poetry was unlike just about everything being written at the time by her more famous mostly male contemporaries. She distilled complexities of experience and emotion into language that truly told it slant. Her verse is like Shakespeare's sonnets which are are at their most difficult because they contain deep and sometimes contradictory emotion.

Helen Vendler proves again to be a great companion for the reader, unpacking and guiding. The best way to read this selection is to read each poem, Vendler's commentary, and then reread that poem once or twice more. Windows open. I cannot say I always agree with Vendler's interpretations, but they are always illuminating. ( )

This is absolutely must reading for any Dickinson scholar, for any student of American literature, for any reader turning to Dickinson for the first time, and for any longtime lover of Dickinson returning to her. A collection of close readings (perhaps the French term "explication de texte" better conveys their quality), it conveniently combines 150 selected poems each followed by a short, readable, and enlightening explication of both the poem's style and its content. Although of course not a substitute for either the Johnson or Franklin editions, Vendler's text does include convenient cross-references to both Johnson and Franklin for each of the 150 poems included. ( )