Sara's Reviews > Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

First of all, my rating is for the poems themselves and not for this edition. It was very poorly done and I used it primarily as a guide for a group read, while finding the poems otherwise for actually reading. I would urge anyone who wishes to read Dickinson to seek out a much better edition than this one.

Not every poem in this collection is one of Dickinson’s best, but each of them has something important to say to us, if we are open and listen.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul, is among my favorites. The idea of hope as a bird that sings endlessly in the soul and never asks for a crumb in return is so visual and so appealing.

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

This put me in mind of this painting by Monet, The Magpie, and the beauty of afternoon light on a snowy but desolate winter’s day.


Marvelous imagery of a beautiful sunset, which could be appreciated at only that level, but there is the deeper meaning of the passage of a life and reaching the other side, with Christ as the shepherd there to lead “the flock away.”

I'll tell you how the Sun rose -
A Ribbon at a time -
The Steeples swam in Amethyst -
The news like Squirrels, ran -
The Hills untied their Bonnets -
The Bobolinks - begun -
Then I said softly to myself -
"That must have been the Sun"!
But how he set - I know not -
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while -
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray -
Put gently up the evening Bars -
And led the flock away -

What makes her poetry so special is the way she tackles subjects that are familiar to every one of us, regardless of age or station in life. I also believe she has hit upon a basic truth, it takes much more than time to heal a true hurt.

They say that ‘time assuages,’--
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.

Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy,
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.

Another long-time favorite. I have it on a sampler that I bought some forty years ago and have carried with me from home to home.

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

One more from this collection, because I thought of the day after my Mother was gone; the stillness in her room and the hushed buzz of voices in the kitchen.

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,--

The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

I have read Emily Dickinson many times, but one cannot visit these poems too many times. They are as full and rich as many more complex and complicated verses. They are magic for their imagery, which brings to life the mind of this remarkable woman.