Many people mistakenly believe that that Emily Dickinson neither sought nor achieved publication in her lifetime. In fact, she published several poems in the Springfield Republican, and tried without success to have her work published in Scribners. On April 15, 1862, Thomas Wentworth Higginson received a letter from Dickinson, enclosing four of her poems. She had read an article of his in the Atlantic Monthly which offered advice for young writers, and she sought his opinion of her work. (For her side of their correspondence, see page 2540-3. Higginson later told a friend that Dickinson's poems were "remarkable, though odd . . . too delicate--not strong enough to publish" (Johnson vi). Though Dickinson may have had some ambivalence about publication, she did publish her poems in various ways. She sent some poems to friends, including them in her letters. She also copied many onto good paper and bound them in little booklets, four to six sheets long. If you're interested in the packets, called facsicles, you can look at the facsimile of them now published by Harvard University Press. See also the first page of the handout, which presents a facsimile of a Dickinson manuscript.

When Dickinson died, she left nearly 1800 poems. Her sister Lavinia discovered a box containing about nine hundred poems, and decided to have them published. She was helped by Mabel Loomis Todd, the wife of an Amherst professor, who in turn got Higginson to help. Todd and Higginson chose one hundred and fifteen poems to publish. But Higginson didn't think that they would be well-received, and tried to smooth out Dickinson's rhymes, make the meter more regular, get rid of provincial expressions, and even to make her metaphors more "sensible." To see how this worked, look at poem 670, which I�ve given to you in the form that it was initially published ("Ghosts" on the handout) and in a version that attempts to reproduce Dickinson�s original manuscript (page 5 of the handout). How do the changes affect the poem?

Later published versions, as Dickinson gained in reputation, and as the editing was assumed by Dickinson's niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, made fewer changes, though Bianchi had trouble sometimes reading the manuscripts. Today, Dickinson scholars often wrestle with the difficulties of rendering Dickinson�s manuscripts into print, both because Dickinson often left multiple versions of poems and because of her idiosyncratic punctuation marks. "Emily Dickinson Writing a Poem," a website at the Dickinson Electronic Archive, allows you to explore these problems.

Dickinson�s poems are wonderfully diverse, so there are many issues you�ll want to consider as you read. Some of them seem to invite readings through a religious or theological lens. They investigate the nature of people�s relationship with God (as in poem 315 on page 2512 of the Norton Anthology and poem 338 on the handout). They consider biblical stories (poem 1317 on the handout) or the nature of the biblical text as a whole (poem 1545 on page 2536-7 of the Norton Anthology). Some of Dickinson�s poems raise questions about the nature of death (poem 712 on page 2524 of the Norton Anthology and poem 1100 on the handout). Others consider the nature of the body (poem 351 on the handout), or the powers and limitations of poetry (poem 1129 on page 2532 and 479 on the handout). And despite Dickinson�s reputation as a recluse, some of her poems seem to consider the Civil War (poem 444 on the handout).

Dickinson�s poetry is difficult but wonderful. Enjoy!