Final Harvest: Poems

by Emily Dickinson

Book Overview

The richest and most authoritative selected volume of Emily Dickinson's poems.
Here is the best of Emily Dickinson's poetry -- 576 poems that fully and fairly represent not only the complete range of Dickinson's poetic genius but also the complexity of her personality, the fluctuation of her mood, and the development of her style. Final Harvest is the first selected volume of Dickinson's work that draws from all 1,775 of her...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316184152
• ISBN13: 9780316184151
• Release Date: January 1964
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Best collection of Emily Dickinson's poems

This is the best collection/selection of Emily Dickinson's poems I have ever found. They're selected from a complete collection. What's special about this book is that none of the poems are edited, as is done in many other collections of her works - and excellent choices are made for which poems to include. Emily often used simple dashes at the ends of her lines, and this selection is true to her originals - and she never put titles on her poems, or indented lines - as many other collections of her poems have the audacity to do - as if the editors of those works knew better than this greatest poet the English language has ever known.

The special value of a volume of this kind

There are Emily Dickinson's greatest poems, most of which my guess is , have in one way or another been anthologized. There is her complete oeuvre of 1775 poems, a large volume indeed. I am not a Dickinson scholar and I found myself a bit lost with such a large number of poems to search through for new gems. This present volume edited by the dean of Dickinson scholars purports to choose of the total oeuvre the very best of her work. I truly appreciate this as a volume of this kind can extend my knowledge and appreciation of her poetry in a way which is most economical and helpful to me.

Strong Medicine

I was never actually a fan of poetry until I encountered Emily Dickinson's poems. It seems as if she has written a poem for everyone. I strongly recomend this book, as my English teacher did to me, not only because of my love for Emily Dickinson, but for the quality of the book. It is obvious that Thomas H. Johnson, the editor, put many long hours of hard work into gathering this collection. Many of her poems were simply scribbled on little pieces of paper, which makes me wonder what kind of literary genius she must have been. With the help of this book, she has become my favorite poet, and I have learned that poetry can be strong medicine for the hurting soul. Final Harvest never leaves my side.

Poems that are one of the world's wonders.

When it comes to choosing an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, we need to be very careful. Selections of her poems have appeared in many editions, and the earlier ones - which are still being reprinted - often contain extensively edited and revised versions of her poems which do not give us what she actually wrote. Her poems are so unusual, in terms of their diction, meters, grammar, and punctuation, that earlier editors felt obliged to replace her characteristic dashes with more conventional punctuation, and to regularize and smooth out her texts to make them more acceptable to readers of the time.In fact, it was only when Thomas H. Johnson's editions appeared that readers were finally given an accurate version of the original texts, with Emily Dickinson's diction and punctuation restored.Johnson has produced three different editions of the poems. The first, a 3-volume Variorum Edition (1955), includes all of her many variants, since Emily Dickinson often added alternate words to her drafts and in many cases seems never to have decided on a final reading. These variants, though extremely interesting to scholars, enthusiasts, and advanced students of ED, are not really necessary in an edition for the general reader.What the general reader needs is an edition in which the editor, after closely examining the manuscripts and taking into account all relevant factors, gives what he feels is a sensible and acceptable reading, and this is what Johnson has given us in the two other editions he prepared, a Reader's edition of the Complete Poems (details of which are given below), and an abridgement of this which included only what he felt were her best poems. In other words, readers can feel confident that in the present edition they have been given (insofar as it's possible to get her idiosyncratic manuscript drafts over into typography) at least one accurate reading of ED's original draft. Those who would like to look at the variants can always consult Johnson's Variorum (1955), or the more recent Variorum of R. W. Franklin (1998). Better still, if they can, they might take a look at R. W. Franklin's sumptuous 2-volume 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' (1981), which gives photographic facsimiles of many of her manuscripts.Emily Dickinson is a very great poet. Personally I think that in some ways she is the greatest poet of all. In the present edition we have been given accurate texts of a selection of her poems, arranged so far as was possible in chronological order of composition. Johnson's is an edition which should serve the general reader well enough for most ordinary purposes. Another excellent Reader's edition that can be recommended has been prepared by ED's most recent editor, R. W. Franklin (1999). Either of the Johnsons or the Franklin (which contains 14 additional poems) will give you access to a body of poems that are so far above the ordinary run of poems that we really ought to have another word for

An eclectic selection

This is a collection of just some of Dickinson's nearly 1800 poems which the editor, T.Johnson, published in the "Complete Works of Emily Dickinson". I have both, and have read them extensively. All of my favorites are in this collection. I have read it, and carried it with me, so often that the book is becoming worn. I will replace it, soon. Since E.D. never titled her poems, the collection is indexed by each poem's first line. This has been an effective method for me.