Actress Julie Harris reads some of Emily Dickenson's poetry and letters, includingThis is my letter to the world * The soul selects her own society * Pain has an element of blank * Hope is the thing with feathers * I'm nobody! Who are you? * I'll tell you how the sun rose * I cautious scanned my little life * If you were coming in the fall * My river runs to thee * I reason, earth is short * I never lost as much but twice * I died for beauty, but was scarce * There came a wind, like a bugle * Safe in their alabaster chambers * I years had been from home * Love is anterior to life * I cannot live with you * My life closed twice before its close * I never saw a moor * To fight aloud is very brave * Because I could not stop for Death * A toad can die of light! * I heard a fly buzz when I died * I like to see it lap up miles * Before I got my eye put out * To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee * A narrow fellow in the grass * A bird came down the walk * What soft, cherubic creatures * I taste a liquor never brewed * Besides the autumn poets sing * The heart asks pleasure first * The sky is low, the clouds are mean * There's a certain slant of light * I felt a funeral in my brain * After great pain a formal feeling comes * I dwell in possiblity * Letters Letter to T.W. Higginson, April 15, 1862; Letter to T.W. Higginson, April 25, 1862; Letter to John L. Graves, April 1856; Letter to Otis P. Lord, December 3, 1882; Letter to Dr. and Mrs. J.G. Holland, summer 1862; Letter to Maria Whitney, summer 1883; Letter to Louise and Frances Norcross, July 1879; Letter to Sally Jenkins, December 1880; Letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, October 1883; Letter to Mrs. J.G. Holland, June 1884
Author Biography Known as “The Myth of Amherst” for her withdrawal from society while still a young women, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) had an inner life that was deeply emotional and intense. She know rapture and despair, pondered the wonder of God and the meaning of death. She broke tradition and was criticized for her seminal experiments with unorthodox phrasing, rhyme and broken meter, within concise verse forms, thus becoming an innovator and forerunner of modern poets.