Too often Hart and Smith simply assert - without offering an argument - that the poet’s letters to Susan are infused with eroticism: an ardor that exceeds the intimate exchanges between women during the nineteenth century. The editors’ theories about Susan as the object of Dickinson’s desire and as the poet’s primary literary critic and collaborator are among the book’s central points. Such speculation is an idea worth raising, but it needs evidence in order to be seriously considered. Hart and Smith speculate that Mabel Loomis Todd executed many of the excisions in order to reduce Susan’s importance and obscure a passionate relationship between the poet and Susan. The fact that these mutilations to the manuscripts exist is certainly striking and raises many questions. Meticulously including even the briefest personal words to Susan that often frame the letter poems, the editors convey that Dickinson’s verse was inextricably linked, both in form and content, to the seemingly ordinary, everyday currents of life.įor many readers, the book will present for the first time information about erasures and excisions of some of Dickinson’s missives to Susan: in particular, the deletion of Susan’s name as the recipient of manuscripts. Furthermore, the editors make a convincing case that Dickinson did not always assign rigid genre distinctions in her work - distinctions upon which most previous editions of her work have insisted. Selection number 102 (J288) is a stunning example of the literary brilliance of what has previously been designated (and devalued) as a letter (“Sweet Sue, / There is / no first, or last, / in Forever - ). By weaving the poems, the letters, and the letter poems together into one work, the book vividly demonstrates that the entire corpus of Dickinson’s writing needs to be taken seriously.
The book is testimony to the literary importance of Dickinson’s letters and to the poet’s fluid treatment of genre. The volume, arranged chronologically, also includes brief introductions by the editors to each of the four chapters and concludes with extensive textual notes. Spanning thirty-six years (1850–1886), the correspondence contains some twenty poems and one letter newly associated with Susan.
The text offers nearly 250 of the poet’s letters, poems and hybrid texts - what Susan termed “letter poems” - and a small handful of extant notes from Susan to Emily.
Open Me Carefully presents selections from Emily Dickinson’s correspondence to her sister-in-law and beloved friend, Susan Huntington Dickinson.
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