Tell It Slant

A complete and mostly unaltered collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson.

Thomas Merton’s Words About Emily Dickinson

The great thing Emily D. has done, and very great — she has hidden and refused herself completely to everyone who would not appreciate her and accept her on her own terms. Yet who “knew” and “saw” her. But she gave herself completely to people of other ages and places who never saw her, but who could receive her gift anyway, regardless of space and time. It is like hugging an angel.

— Thomas Merton [A Search for Solitude by Thomas Merton, Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor].

Additional Poems by Emily Dickinson

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

― Emily Dickinson [The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Belknap Press, 1998].

“Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured.”

― Emily Dickinson [The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Belknap Press, 1998].

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”

― Emily Dickinson [The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson].

“My business is Circumference.”

― Emily Dickinson [The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson].

Scott Donaldson, Minding Emily Dickinson’s Business [Excerpt]

“Circumference is the term that Emily uses when she has no other word. It is the greatness of all that the world is and ever could be. It is the enormity of the universe and what exists after life. Donaldson says, “Circumference stands for the provinces of nature and of God which Emily Dickinson was never able to know in this world but never to cease seeking knowledge of… (Poem 579)” She uses this term to refer to all life – everything from art, to nature, to love, to faith. It is all in the realm of circumference that Emily is seeking for in her writing, but feels she never finds in her human life.

In a couple of poems, Emily points to death as a possible way of truly finding circumference. This may be because it was the one place that she hadn’t had the ability to look herself. This can be seen well in Poem 943:

A Coffin—is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it’s diminished Plane.

A Grave—is a restricted Breadth—
Yet ampler than the Sun—
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon

To Him who on it’s small Repose
Bestows a single Friend—
Circumference without Relief—
Or Estimate—or End—

― Emily Dickinson [Scott Donaldson, literary critic, from his article “Minding Emily Dickinson’s Business”].

Circumference is the place of ultimate home. It is the place where one feels completely free, where one can express anything and everything. Circumference is knowing that all is within the grasp of one’s hand and one is not idle in pursuing it. Emily Dickinson said that her business was circumference, her business was to help others understand this vast boundlessness that she was searching for. She wanted to understand and receive circumference, and she wanted to bring you into it.”

― Emily Dickinson [The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (via Goodreads.com)].