1830–1886

Emily Dickinson

Amherst recluse who rebuilt English from the inside. Dashes, riddles, and a God addressed with terrifying intimacy.

Compressed lyric into a private physics of death, awe, and the slant of truth.

Primary works

Lyric poems · c. 1858–1886

Poems

Emily Dickinson

Fascicles of extreme compression. Death is a polite caller; God is a hesitant correspondent; the brain is wider than the sky. The dash does the work of breath and of fracture.

American lyric