Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson

by Martha Nell Smith

Book Overview

Emily Dickinson wrote a "letter to the world" and left it lying in her drawer more than a century ago. This widely admired epistle was her poems, which were never conventionally published in book form during her lifetime. Since the posthumous discovery of her work, general readers and literary scholars alike have puzzled over this paradox of wanting to communicate widely and yet apparently refusing to publish. In this pathbreaking study, Martha Nell Smith unravels the paradox by boldly recasting two of the oldest and still most frequently asked questions about Emily Dickinson: Why didn't she publish more poems while she was alive? and Who was her most important contemporary audience?

Regarding the question of publication, Smith urges a reconception of the act of publication itself. She argues that Dickinson did publish her work in letters and in forty manuscript books that circulated among a cultured network of correspondents, most important of whom was her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Rather than considering this material unpublished because unprinted, Smith views its alternative publication as a conscious strategy on the poet's part, a daring poetic experiment that also included Dickinson's unusual punctuation, line breaks, stanza divisions, calligraphic orthography, and bookmaking-all the characteristics that later editors tried to standardize or eliminate in preparing the poems for printing.

Dickinson's relationship with her most important reader, Sue Dickinson, has also been lost or distorted by multiple levels of censorship, Smith finds. Emphasizing the poet-sustaining aspects of the passionate bonds between the two women, Smith shows that their relationship was both textual and sexual. Based on study of the actual holograph poems, Smith reveals the extent of Sue Dickinson's collaboration in the production of poems, most notably "Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers." This finding will surely challenge the popular conception of the isolated, withdrawn Emily Dickinson.

Well-versed in poststructuralist, feminist, and new textual criticism, Rowing in Eden uncovers the process by which the conventional portrait of Emily Dickinson was drawn and offers readers a chance to go back to original letters and poems and look at the poet and her work through new eyes. It will be of great interest to a wide audience in literary and feminist studies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292776667
• ISBN13: 9780292776661
• Release Date: December 1992
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating.

At times a bit cumbersome, but overall this is a nice introduction into re-reading Emily Dickinson. The intended audience, no doubt, is a reader well-versed in Emily Dickinson who is willing to explore the poet with no preconceived notions. In a sense, therefore, it may be most enjoyed by those who have just begun their investigation and study of Dickinson. The author has gone back to the original "manuscripts" of the poems and letters written by Emily, and noted how they have been edited, censored, and manipulated by those entrusted to publish Emily's writings after her death. The author makes a convincing case that Emily's relationship with her brother's wife, Sue, was much more profound than others have suggested; and, that the "editors" of Emily's poems worked hard to suppress evidence of this relationship. Ms Smith did not want this study to be another biography but it would have been helpful to learn a bit more of some of the individuals she mentions. Specifically, I have in mind, Kate Anthon, whom Ms Smith states received passionate letters from Emily. I do not recall seeing the name Kate Anthon in Cynthia Griffin Wolff's biography of Emily, and she is not listed in the index of Wolff's biography. Without question, this book needs to be read as an academic study, and will take several re-readings to get the full impact. This appears to be Ms Smith's first full-length book regarding Emily and the beginning of her own use of technology in studying the humanities. Ms Smith is a founding director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. She is now a recognized Dickinson scholar with several books on Emily Dickinson published and more in progress. I am very new to Emily Dickinson but it appears that reading Martha Nell Smith is imperative for those with more than a passing interest in the poet. My gut feeling is that Harold Bloom would not be happy with Ms Smith's hypotheses but I may be wrong. I would think he would be pleased with the scholarship. For more, go to Martha Nell Smith's website.