Visiting Emily
“For anyone who loves Emily Dickinson (anyone who would admit to not loving her is, frankly, someone not worth knowing), this is an invaluable collection. Not because it contains the best poems from the poets included— it doesn't—and not because the poems shed more light on Emily, her life, or her work—that's not their purpose—but rather for the joy of joining with these poets in a celebration of words that wildly gyre around and around that immovable, inscrutable, awesome Mystery at the very center of it all: Emily Dickinson.”—David M. Perkins, Bloomsbury Review
“Highly recommended.”—Library Journal
“For anyone who appreciates Dickinson, this is a unique gem of a collection.”—Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin
This unique anthology gathers work by eighty poets inspired by Emily Dickinson. Beginning with Hart Crane's 1927 poem “To Emily Dickinson” and moving forward through the century to such luminary figures as Archibald MacLeish, John Berryman, Yvor Winters, Adrienne Rich, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Amy Clampitt, William Stafford, and Galway Kinnell, Visiting Emily offers both a celebration of and an homage to one of the world's great poets.
If there was ever any doubt about Dickinson's influence on modern and contemporary poets, this remarkable collection surely puts it to rest. Gathered here are poems reflecting a wide range of voices, styles, and forms—poems written in traditional and experimental forms; poems whose tones are meditative, reflective, reverent and irreverent, satirical, whimsical, improvisational, and serious. Many of the poets draw from Dickinson's biography, while others imagine events from her life. Some poets borrow lines from Dickinson's poems or letters as triggers for their inspiration. Though most of the poems connect directly to Dickinson's life or work, for others the connection is more oblique.
Marvin Bell, Lucy Brock-Broido, Amy Clampitt, Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emanuel, Donald Hall, Edward Hirsch, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Archibald MacLeish, Kathleen Norris, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Ron Padgett, Linda Pastan, Molly Peacock, Donald Revell, Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, Richard Wilbur, Charles Wright, and Ray Young Bear