run with. She was an intoxicated being, drunken
with the little tipsy joys of the simplest form,
shaped as they were to elude always her evasive
imagination into thinking that nothing she could
think or feel but was extraordinary and remark-
able. ‘‘Your letter gave no drunkenness because I
tasted rum before—Domingo comes but once,’’
she wrote to Colonel Higginson, a pretty conceit
surely to offer a loved friend.
These passages will give the unfamiliar
reader a taste of the sparkle of the poet’s hurry-
ing fancy. She will always delight those who love
her type of elfish, evasive genius. And those who
care for the vivid and living element in words will
find her, to say the least, among the masters in
her feeling for their strange shapes and for the
fresh significances contained in them. A born
thinker of poetry, and in a great measure a gifted
writer of it, refreshing many a heavy moment
made dull with the weightiness of books or of
burdensome thinking, this poet-sprite sets scur-
rying all weariness of the brain; and they shall
have an hour of sheer delight who invite poetic
converse with Emily Dickinson. She will repay
with funds of rich celestial coin from her rare and
precious fancyings.
Source:Marsden Hartley, ‘‘Emily Dickinson,’’ inDial,
Vol. 65, No. 771, August 15, 1918, pp. 95–97.
Sources
Advertisement, ‘‘Poems, edited by two of her friends,
Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson,’’ inNew
York Times, December 20, 1890, p. 5.
Dickinson, Emily, ‘‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’’ inThe
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas
H. Johnson, Little Brown, 1960, p. 133.
Habegger, Alfred,My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The
Life of Emily Dickinson, Random House, 2001.
Ryan, Michael, ‘‘Vocation According to Dickinson,’’ in
American Poetry Review, Vol. 29, No. 5, September–
October 2000, pp. 43–48.Further Reading
Frank, Elizabeth, ‘‘The Pagan of Amherst,’’ inNew York
Times Book Review, November 13, 1986.
In the process of writing a review of Cynthia
Griffin Wolff’s biography Emily Dickinson,
Frank evaluates all the biographies of Dickinson
prior to 1986. This review provides information
that may help readers choose which of the many
biographies of Dickinson they want to read.
Jackson, Virginia, ‘‘Dickinson Undone,’’ inRaritan, Vol.
24, No. 4, Spring 2005, pp. 128–48.
This article explains how Thomas Wentworth
Higginson drew attention to his and Mabel
Loomis Todd’s edition of the poetry by pub-
lishing Dickinson’s letters to him in theAtlantic
Monthly.Jackson goes on to explain that from
Higginson to modern critics, Dickinson’s
poetry has posed serious challenges, first of
which is how to frame and understand the
poetry given its various forms of transmission.
Martin, Wendy, ed.The Cambridge Companion to Emily
Dickinson, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
This book is a convenient compilation of schol-
arly articles on the poet and her work. The
selected essays are presented in three catego-
ries: biography and publication history; poetic
strategies and themes, and cultural contexts.
Wineapple, Brenda,White Heat: The Friendship of Emily
Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Knopf,
2008.
Charmingly written, dramatic, and engaging,
this book relates the story of how Thomas
Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis
Todd became the first editors of Emily Dick-
inson’s poetry. Wineapple handily explains the
editorial difficulties presented by the manu-
scripts and what decisions were made and
why in the process of publishing them.I’m Nobody! Who are you?