I read a lot of these the first time when I was a research assistant and working on the Emily Dickinson Lexicon ( edl.byu.edu ). I learned quickly that there's a lot more to Emily Dickinson than I had thought. Yes, all her poems can be sung to the same melody, and they use a lot of dashes and are very short - but there's more.
Utterly brilliant.
Although it's marked by time - and what really isn't? - in a way which isn't my marred, modern cup of tea, the sheer potency of Dickinson's language, rhythm, coinage of words and non-rhymes win me over completely, and take me to another level totally.
I shan't say more on the poetry itself, but the imagery painted is sharp, veering from "the usual" in a way that has lived for more than a hundred years and will continue living forever, I'm sure.
While this collection does not contain all of her poems, it is annotated with short sentences on names, places and references, e.g. to passages from the christian bible and other poets.
This collection's only real flaw: it's too short.
