New Poems of Emily Dickinson

New Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by William H. Shurr, is an anthology of Emily Dickinson's newly discovered material, of course. The compilation of poems begins with an introduction of Dickinson's use of the letters of the metric, as well as a list of five different categories under which Dickinson's verse falls. First, she writes epigrams; second, she writes "prose-formatted poems", which are excerpts from her letters during her time; third, she uses riddles as her form of miscellaneous expressions; fourth, Dickinson has left over rough materials or drafts that seem to include various forms of poetry; and fifth, she has some juvenile letters left over that reveal the beginnings of her stylistic elements. Here, we can see the various manners that Dickinson uncovers her idiosyncratic verse, and it's easy to define her as a poet of her time through these five categories. The new poems in this anthology clearly have precedents set by Dickinson, as they relate to each of these five stylistic forms of the poet, while it is quite obvious that the poet contributes her idiosyncratic verse in the newly discovered material; however, the new material brings a fresh look at the writer, as we can perceive her quintessential works from different, exciting angles. For example, Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 publication of Dickinson's poems is a three-volume edition of Dickinson's poetry, "reformatting [her] lines from prose to poetry" (4). We can see from this perspective the characteristics of Emily Dickinson's poetry in a different way, which makes this book of poems both traditional and fresh.

The groupings of poems collaborate, as the editor incorporates Dickinson's passages into descriptions of the different forms she uses. The second chapter discusses her "new genre", involving epigrams, which apparently is the first time Dickinson's use of epigrams is both unmasked and acknowledged. Chapter three reveals the new material that has been discovered in more letters as well as prose by Dickinson; the book isolates each new poem, enlightening the reader with more work from the poet, herself. Of course, most of the anthology acknowledges these new poems, and then concludes itself with workshop materials and letters that have recently been found by the poet. I looked mostly at chapter three, trying to find the parallels between well-known poems by the author and these new poems with which we are not as familiar. There is definitely a parallel, as these poems are very similar in style to Dickinson's usual work; however, within the next few pages are "poems" that should not be considered Dickinson's usual poetry, as they are "incomplete", and "experimental"-- perhaps this was the earlier years of Dickinson when she was developing her stylistic writing.

Nevertheless, the book, overall, includes the new material that Dickinson worked with to form her most admired and well known poetry that we read today; the different compilations of her newly acknowledged work in this book of poetry help to further understand and define Emily Dickinson as a versatile poet of her time, as well as draw conclusions from her prose to incorporate them into isolated stanzas of poetry, as does Johnson.