This slim, beautifully packaged volume’s Preface begins with this sentence: “Although a very prolific poet—and arguably America’s greatest—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published fewer than a dozen of her eighteen hundred poems.”  Prolific, America’s greatest, 1800 poems, less than a dozen published––if that doesn’t grab your interest, what will!

This collection of poems and fragments share one common characteristic—they’re all written on odd scraps of paper, envelopes, or other rather unconventional materials.  Evidently, as she approached her later years, Dickinson turned from writing formal poems and binding them into groups called fascicles and began writing fragments. The works published here are shown in both the original handwriting and in ‘translated’ form, and it’s a rare treat to see so much of Dickinson’s work in the process of being ‘worked out’.  As the editors write in the Preface, “Written with the full powers of her late, most radical period, these envelope poems seem intensely alive and charged with a special poignancy—-addressed to no one and everyone at once.  They remind us of the contingency, transience, vulnerability, and hope embodied in all our messages.” 

If you find Dickinson’s poetry stirring, you will enjoy these fragments dashed off on the odd piece of paper at hand, written neary 200 years ago and still vibrant and relevant today.