Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

(June 23)

Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Barnes & Noble edition published 2007

I love Dickinson. Sadly, I have to agree with this review:

I don’t doubt that it’s possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson’s poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors wish she had written – a sort of ‘tidied-up’ and regularized version, a badly-tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren’t.

For example, on page 85:

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

It’s heft, not weight, and they’re not the same thing. This edition is sort of like, Dickinson Dumbed Down. :\

From the same review, and for my reference as well as yours:

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED’s poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader’s editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader’s editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don’t feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson’s abridgement of his Reader’s edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson’s Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson’s edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

Share|