Thirty years ago, I read ED in school, a few poems chosen for high school students, scrubbed by the sensibilities of that time and rural place. My remembered impression was of a strange recluse who wrote of flowers and death. On word of friends, I came to remake her acquaintance, and found passion, unconventional explorations, and wide knowledge of her moment. That a woman so contained in space should flow out through time touches and pauses me. I should like to have known her, to have had her as my friend (by email, or chat?), and been informed of her wider, richer world distilled ever smaller until its circumference reduced me, too; a term between eternity and immortality (ED, you amaze).

Judith Farr has wrought a miracle in bringing ED to me so compellingly (thank you, Judith).

EMILY DICKINSON: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ARTICLES. Edited by Judith Farr. New Century Views. 268 pages. Upper Saddle River, NJ: 1996. ISBN 0-13-033524-X (pbk).

After an interesting, informative, and vigorously written Introduction by Judith Farr, eighteen articles of varying quality follow. Of the eighteen, at least eight are definitely worth reading. From these eight, the reader comes away with an enhanced appreciation of ED's work, with a better idea of how to go about reading and understanding her poems, and in awe of her giant sensibility.

Most of the remaining essays, unfortunately, seem to a greater or lesser extent to share the same defect. They have been written from either a Christian or feminist perspective, and seem determined at all costs to find ways of making ED fit the procrustean beds of their respective ideologies. As such they end up telling us much more about their writers than about ED, and I personally found many of them unreadable.

There are so many today who seem determined to reduce ED, to cut her down to their own diminished size and rope her in for their particular cause, so many partisans who are desperately pretending: "In fact, you know, Emily Dickinson is really one of us!" ED, it is stridently affirmed, was an American, a Christian, and a female poet of the 19th century. But we all know that there were many such poets. And where are they now? Who is reading them? No-one. And if that's all ED had been I don't think anyone today would be reading her either.

ED escaped all bounds. She was, in a sense, not an 'American,' certainly not a 'Christian,' and not even a 'woman.' She was a human being immersed like all of us in the human condition, and speaking to us out of that condtion in a way no-one has ever spoken before. "Truth is so rare a thing," she once said, and her poems offer us that commodity in abundance, irrespective of our nationality, religion, or gender.

Relevant here is the indignant remark of Georgia O'Keefe which Judith Farr quotes in her fine Introduction: "I am not a _woman_ artist, I am an Artist." Farr comments: "True art, as Dickinson herself suggests . . . finally escapes categories: national, temporal, sexual" (p.15, italics in original). In other words, as a poet, ED addresses herself, not to that which divides us, but to our shared humanity.

Besides Judith Farr, I think that of the critics in the present collection at least eight others would probably agree with this. The general excellence and unbiased quality of their pieces make this collection well worth having:

Richard Wilbur, for his extremely interesting "Sumptuous Destitution," (a piece which is immediately followed by a rather weak and unconvincing feminist riposte).

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, for her Bakhtinian '[Im]pertinent Constructions of the Body and Self.'

Suzanne Juhasz, for her stimulating "The Landscape of the Spirit."

David Porter, for his 'Strangely Abstracted Images,' an extract from his The Modern Idiom (1981).

Cristanne Miller, for her 'Dickinson's Experimental Grammar: Nouns and Verbs,' an extract from her Emily
Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar (1987).

Kamilla Denman, for her superb 'Emily Dickinson's Volcanic Punctuation.'

Judy Jo Small, for her 'A Musical Aesthetic,' an extract from her Positive as Sound (1990).

Jerome McGann, for his brief but important 'Emily Dickinson's Visible Language.' I was particularly impressed by this as it seems to me to demonstrate conclusively the pressing need for an edition of ED's poems that would finally respect her lineation.

A Biography with Factual Errors

I had been warned that this book was poorly written and edited, that it had no documentation, and that
it did not succeed in proving the author's arguments. Nothing, however, could ever have prepared me for the inaccuracies and unwarranted assumptions of the book itself.

Ms. Farr's thesis itself contains a serious error in fact. She states, without qualification, that Emily Dickinson wore a nuns habit because she did not know who the master was.

The book goes downhill from here. Ms. Farr's evidence that no one is Master includes several loosely-crafted - one might rather say, accidental - stories about liaisons between Emily Dickinson and her women acquaintances.
Farr builds several arguments on speculation. Perhaps the most egregious example is the question
of Susan's house next door. After establishing the existence of the ivory gown, Farr asserts, in a short but vacuous epilogue that she really doesn't know who master was. Or maybe there wasn't a master. Or if there was, any body's guess is as good as hers.

For several pages Farr proceeds as if this connection were fact, making a few tenuous connections between Dickinson's poetry and women, and kisses behind closed doors. Then she admits it is all fiction. In addition, Farr tells us that when Emily died, the master was known but then she does not feel that s/he is known, as it might be a woman.

I have saved just enough space for the epilogue and the bulk of the book. The epilogue is not worth the meager price of this empty paperback.

English teacher in Texas

Farr's epistolary novel about the life and passions of Emily Dickinson is a mesmerizing, inspiring, zesty read. Based on facts gleaned through letters and Dickinson's poetry, the story elaborates on Dickinson's 10-month school career, on her passions for women and for men, and on her final, ailing years. Like Cunningham's "The Hours" and Zackheim's "Violette's Embrace", it's a wonderful tribute to a woman whose true life is obscured by history. Farr's rendering of Dickinson's school year brought to mind Rosemary Manning's "The Chinese Garden" and Dorothy Strachey Bussy's "Olivia".