Essay selections offer readers a variety of perspectives on Dickinson through the eyes of some of today's best Dickinson scholars. One essay explores the influences of New England Puritanism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and the Civil War on Dickinson's work, while another offers a close reading of several poems to show how experiencing their sound patterns and syntax can inform our understanding of them. Previously published essays discuss the power of her poetry and her complex relations with the natural world and Christian heaven.

On Emily Dickinson / --Biography of Emily Dickinson / -- The Paris review perspective / -- Emily Dickinson and her culture / -- Major trends in Dickinson criticism / -- Dwelling in possibility: an introduction to Dickinson's poetics / -- The conscious corpse in Browning, Housman, and Dickinson / -- Dickinson's local, global, and cosmic perspectives / -- Emily Dickinson thinking / -- Trying to think with Emily Dickinson / -- The ample word: immanence and authority in Dickinson's poetry / -- The irresistible lure of repetition and Dickinson's poetics of analogy / -- Emily Dickinson: reclusion against itself / -- The back story: the Christian narrative and modernism in Emily Dickinson's poems / -- Dickinson's death-haunted earthly paradise / -- "Often seen -- but seldom felt": Emily Dickinson's reluctant ecology of place / -- Addresses to a divided nation: images of war in Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman / -- "The inner brand": Emily Dickinson, portraiture, and the narrative of liberal interiority / Sarah E. Blackwood. On Emily Dickinson -- Biography of Emily Dickinson -- The Paris review perspective -- Emily Dickinson and her culture -- Major trends in Dickinson criticism -- Dwelling in possibility: an introduction to Dickinson's poetics -- The conscious corpse in Browning, Housman, and Dickinson -- Dickinson's local, global, and cosmic perspectives -- Emily Dickinson thinking -- Trying to think with Emily Dickinson -- The ample word: immanence and authority in Dickinson's poetry -- The irresistible lure of repetition and Dickinson's poetics of analogy -- Emily Dickinson: reclusion against itself -- The back story: the Christian narrative and modernism in Emily Dickinson's poems -- Dickinson's death-haunted earthly paradise -- "Often seen -- but seldom felt": Emily Dickinson's reluctant ecology of place -- Addresses to a divided nation: images of war in Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman -- "The inner brand": Emily Dickinson, portraiture, and the narrative of liberal interiority.