Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Word Songs

In this distinguished addition to the literature, writer and editor Philip Dossick presents a select collection of Dickinson’s most brilliant works, from relatively obscure gems to her better-known classics, so as to best illustrate Dickinson’s phenomenal range. 


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Emily Dickinson lived as a recluse in Amherst, Massachusetts, dedicating herself to writing a “letter to the world”—the 1,775 poems left unpublished at her death in 1886. Today, Dickinson stands in the front rank of American poets.

—Billy Collins


Dickinson’s idiosyncratic style, along with her deep resonance of thought and her observations about life and death, love and nature, and solitude and society, have firmly established her as one of America’s true poetic geniuses.

—Rachel Wetzsteon




At the heart of this new collection stands the work that made Dickinson's reputation as one of America's greatest visionary poets: an uncompromising artist who has written with astonishing lucidity about the soul's darkest, most chilling hours.

—Matt Travers





EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) was an American poet, and an obsessively private writer. Only seven of her more than 1700 poems were published during her lifetime. She withdrew from most social contact at the age of 23, and thereafter devoted herself, in secret, to writing. Today, she is widely regarded as one of America’s greatest poets.







PHILIP DOSSICK is the New York Times critically acclaimed writer and director of the motion picture The P.O.W. He has written for television, including the outstanding drama, Transplant, produced by David Susskind for CBS. His most recent books include Aztecs: Epoch Of Social Revolution, Sex And Dreams, Mark Twain In Seattle, Oscar Wilde: Sodomy and Heresy, The Naked Citizen: Notes On Privacy In The Twenty-First Century, Raymond Chowder And Bob Skloot Must Die, The Deposition, Vincent Van Gogh: Madness and Magic, Lenny Bruce: The Myth of Free Speech, and Ghost Dance Prophets: From Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi.