Emily Dickinson
The Poet on the Second Story

In Emily Dickinson: The Poet on the Second Story Professor Jerome Loving provides an intuitive and 'interiorized' reading of the poet's most important works.

Jerome Loving (Author)

9780521109079, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 March 2009

148 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.9 cm, 0.23 kg

In Emily Dickinson: The Poet on the Second Story Professor Jerome Loving provides an intuitive and 'interiorized' reading of the poet's most important works. Using biographical matters as a frame for his interpretations, Loving demonstrates how Dickinson's life is bound up with any series reading of her work. Literally, Dickinson wrote on the second storey of her father's house, but Loving argues that she also used that 'story' (or art) as both a retreat from the transitory nature of life and as a way of experiencing life in what might be termed the 'subjunctive' instead of the 'imperative'. Her persona, therefore, is as disembodied in the poems as was the reclusive poet to visitors to the Amherst 'Homestead'. Loving attempts to show that the voice we hear in the poems is that of the 'mind alone', as Dickinson herself said, 'without corporeal friend'. Of interest to students and scholars of American literature, this critical study will also interest more general readers who enjoy Dickinson's poetry.

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Rubicon
2. Called back
3. The 'Hansom' man
4. Father Emerson and Emily
5. In Medias Res
6. The master's house
7. The leaf-fringed legend of Emily Dickinson
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Poetry by individual poets [DCF]