Emily Dickinson wrote a "letter to the world" and left it lying in her drawer more than a century ago. This widely admired epistle was her poems, which were never conventionally published in book form during her lifetime. Since the posthumous discovery of her work, general readers and literary scholars alike have puzzled over this paradox of wanting to communicate widely and yet apparently refusing to publish. In this pathbreaking study, Martha Nell Smith unravels the paradox by boldly recasting two of the oldest and still most frequently asked questions about Emily Dickinson: Why didn't she publish more poems while she was alive? and Who was her most important contemporary audience? Regarding the question of publication, Smith urges a reconception of the act of publication itself. She argues that Dickinson did publish her work in letters and in forty manuscript books that circulated among a cultured network of correspondents, most important of whom was her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Rather than considering this material unpublished because unprinted, Smith views its alternative publication as a conscious strategy on the poet's part, a daring poetic experiment that also included Dickinson's unusual punctuation, line breaks, stanza divisions, calligraphic orthography, and bookmaking—all the characteristics that later editors tried to standardize or eliminate in preparing the poems for printing. Dickinson's relationship with her most important reader, Sue Dickinson, has also been lost or distorted by multiple levels of censorship, Smith finds. Emphasizing the poet-sustaining aspects of the passionate bonds between the two women, Smith shows that their relationship was both textual and sexual. Based on study of the actual holograph poems, Smith reveals the extent of Sue Dickinson's collaboration in the production of poems, most notably "Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers." This finding will surely challenge the popular conception of the isolated, withdrawn Emily Dickinson. Well-versed in poststructuralist, feminist, and new textual criticism, Rowing in Eden uncovers the process by which the conventional portrait of Emily Dickinson was drawn and offers readers a chance to go back to original letters and poems and look at the poet and her work through new eyes. It will be of great interest to a wide audience in literary and feminist studies.

Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson

Literature & Fiction

Smith, Martha Nell

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

In this boldly revisionary work, three noted Dickinson scholars take issue with the traditional tragic image of the poet. Focusing on the comic elements in Dickinson's art from a feminist point of view, they show how Dickinson uses the comedic resources of language to contest all types of orthodoxy and to offer the possibility of transforming society.Following a jointly written chapter on "Comedy and Performance in Emily Dickinson's Poetry," each author takes up a different aspect of comedy in Dickinson's work. Suzanne Juhasz looks at teasing as a form of humor and criticism. Martha Nell Smith examines the cartoons (reproduced in this book) with which Dickinson illustrated some of her poems and letters and explores the way in which other poems present imagery in cartoon-like sequences. And Cristanne Miller delves into the humor of excess or grotesquerie which Dickinson uses to unhinge the reader's normalizing frames of reference and make space for a different perspective.These views introduce a new Emily Dickinson - playful, wry, witty, tough, bold, challenging, and successful. Comic Power in Emily Dickinson recovers a poet who questioned not only authority but also the structure of her society. It makes an important contribution to studies of women's humor and the relationship, between gender and authority.

Comic Power in Emily Dickinson

Juhasz, Suzanne

Miller, Cristanne

Emily Dickinson wrote a "letter to the world" and left it lying in her drawer more than a century ago. This widely admired epistle was her poems, which were never conventionally published in book form during her lifetime. Since the posthumous discovery of her work, general readers and literary scholars alike have puzzled over this paradox of wanting to communicate widely and yet apparently refusing to publish. In this pathbreaking study, Martha Nell Smith unravels the paradox by boldly recasting two of the oldest and still most frequently asked questions about Emily Dickinson: Why didn't she publish more poems while she was alive? and Who was her most important contemporary audience? Regarding the question of publication, Smith urges a reconception of the act of publication itself. She argues that Dickinson did publish her work in letters and in forty manuscript books that circulated among a cultured network of correspondents, most important of whom was her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Rather than considering this material unpublished because unprinted, Smith views its alternative publication as a conscious strategy on the poet's part, a daring poetic experiment that also included Dickinson's unusual punctuation, line breaks, stanza divisions, calligraphic orthography, and bookmaking—all the characteristics that later editors tried to standardize or eliminate in preparing the poems for printing. Dickinson's relationship with her most important reader, Sue Dickinson, has also been lost or distorted by multiple levels of censorship, Smith finds. Emphasizing the poet-sustaining aspects of the passionate bonds between the two women, Smith shows that their relationship was both textual and sexual. Based on study of the actual holograph poems, Smith reveals the extent of Sue Dickinson's collaboration in the production of poems, most notably "Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers." This finding will surely challenge the popular conception of the isolated, withdrawn Emily Dickinson. Well-versed in poststructuralist, feminist, and new textual criticism, Rowing in Eden uncovers the process by which the conventional portrait of Emily Dickinson was drawn and offers readers a chance to go back to original letters and poems and look at the poet and her work through new eyes. It will be of great interest to a wide audience in literary and feminist studies.

Alicia Ostriker’s artistic and intellectual productions as a poet, critic, and essayist over the past 50 years are protean and have been profoundly influential to generations of readers, writers, and critics. In all her writings, both the feminist and the human engage fiercely with the material and metaphysical world. Ostriker is a poet concerned with questions of social justice, equality, religion, and how to live in a world marked by both beauty and tragedy.  Everywoman Her Own Theology: On the Poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker engages Ostriker’s poetry from throughout her career, including her first volume Songs, her award-winning collection The Imaginary Lover, and her more recent work in the collections No Heaven, the volcano sequence, The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog, and Waiting for the Light. Like her literary criticism and essays, Ostriker’s poetry explores themes of feminism, Jewish life, family, and social justice.  With insightful essays—some newly written for this collection—poets and literary critics including Toi Derricotte, Daisy Fried, Cynthia Hogue, Tony Hoagland, and Eleanor Wilner illuminate and open new pathways for critical engagement with Alicia Ostriker’s lifetime of poetic work.

Everywoman Her Own Theology: On the Poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker (Under Discussion)

Enszer, Julie R.

University of Michigan Press

Emily Dickinson: A User's Guide (Wiley Blackwell Introductions to Literature)

Emily Dickinson, A User’s Guide presents a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of Emily Dickinson, Offers a richly appreciative biographical and critical introduction to America’s most widely admired woman poet  Written by a world-renowned Emily Dickinson scholar and American literary critic Represents the only book that reads Dickinson through her manuscripts, the print editions of her work, and the major digital Dickinson editions published since 1994 The User’s Guide is a new kind of book for a new era of reading Is the only book that is an introduction to the poet, her work, and her receptions among readers Is the only book that presents new biography and textual discoveries that have just come to light in 2011   Interprets Dickinson through the dynamic interchange between the reader’s sense of her life and her work Draws on prominent critical views from the past century, including sentimental, modernist, new critical, psychological, feminist, queer, and postmodernist readings

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Wiley/Blackwell

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Martha Nell. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Smith, Martha Nell

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Martha Nell. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson

Comic Power in Emily Dickinson

Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson

Everywoman Her Own Theology: On the Poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker (Under Discussion)

Emily Dickinson: A User's Guide (Wiley Blackwell Introductions to Literature)

Emily Dickinson: A User's Guide (Wiley Blackwell Introductions to Literature)