Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson

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Summary: Her breast is fit for pearls
Review: Any Emily Dickinson historian or student will want this book. It contains the lost puzzle pieces, released by Sue's family, to the mysterious Emily Dickinson. Sue wanted this story told at the right time. The sheer talent in these writings is amazing. Here was a girl who spent her days as a recluse doing laundry and dishes and writing letters and carrying them around in her pockets. The pen and paper, written word, was what connected the lone Emily to her outside world, her loves, her friends, and now to the rest of us. A must have for any writer who studies her.

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Summary: The Great Sue-Mabel Debate Continues
Review: As most of you know, the Sue-Mabel controversy began virtually at ED's death (Vinnie gave Sue first shot at editing ED's poems, then turned the job over to Mabel when Sue couldn't come through) and continues to this day, one of the most fascinating things in literary history. Sue and Mabel, and their respective daughters, were in a bitter competition to publish the ED poems in their control and to preserve their "place" in ED's history. In 1966, Sewall's ground-breaking ED biography primarily relied on the Mabel side for information, so a negative picture of Sue was created. The recent Habegger biography relied on the Sue side, and a more humane picture of Sue came out.

"Open Me Carefully" comes down firmly on the Sue side of the great divide, arguing for a much greater role in ED's life and work than heretofore granted Sue (though I don't think the author's views are quite as revolutionary as the authors claim). A lot of axes are ground here, and frankly, I disagreed with many of their conclusions. I don't think they took sufficient account of Sewall's point that ED presented a different "face" to each of her correspondents (though, as in so much else, Habegger disagrees), nor evaluated in a balanced way the similar or even greater passion ED brought in her correspondence to Bowles, Higginson, Lord, and others. There really is very little evidence that Sue (herself a rather mediocre poet) had any significant impact on ED's stunning style and insight.

Nonetheless, I gave it five stars for its presentation and its excellent explication of an argument that, while I don't agree with it, should be evaluated by all interested ED students.

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Summary: Not a big Dickinson fan, but...
Review: I still loved this book, and I think that reading her personal letters gave me more insight into her as a fellow human being, which in turn allowed me to take a new look at her poetry. This is one of the few books of letters I've read where I found that the footnotes were just as interesting as the letters themselves. There is so much information contained in this book that one would think it would be almost burdonsome (or boring) to read, but it's not. I have to say I prefer Dickinson's prose to her poetry. Her letters flow beautifully and are full of spirit and light and wit. I guess the short of it is that reading this book of letters helped me to better connect to her humanity. Of course, I have a passion for books of letters because there is something delicious about feeling as though you are a voyeur looking in on the most private parts of someone else's life. Somehow you can get a far more intimate and interesting view from someone's letters to another than you ever could by simply reading a biography.

Even if you aren't a fan of Dickinson, give this book a chance. Beauty is always worth a read.

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Summary: Superb Scholarship
Review: OPEN ME CAREFULLY : Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. 323 pp. Edited by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith. Ashfield, Massachusetts : Paris Press, 1998. ISBN 0-9638183-6-8 (pbk.)

The present book came as a revelation. How much more meaningful and exciting these 'letters' become when, instead of being treated as letters they are treated as poems. The range of effects generated by the simple procedure of respecting ED's autographs is amazing.

Editors Hart and Smith are to be congratulated. But one wonders why it has taken Dickinson scholars so long to start treating her drafts with the respect they deserve? One also wonders just how much poetry may be lurking unrecognized in the various editions of regularized letters we have been given? And finally one wonders when we are going to be given an unregularized Complete Poems? Would anyone, for example, seriously think of destroying William Carlos Williams' lineation and printing his work as straight prose or in conventional stanza form? Of course not. Then why should it be considered acceptable to distort the forms and rhythms of a vastly more important writer?

Dear Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith - You've shown us what can be done, have done it extremely well, and we love it! In fact, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts! So how about an unregularized COMPLETE POEMS? Please?

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Summary: One of the best manuscript studies of ED ever
Review: The best thing about this book is that it gives us Dickinson's poems to her best friend, Sue, in the form they actually appear on the page. For most people, seeing the manuscripts of her poems is something that will never happen so Smith and Hart do their best to give us an idea of what Sue would have seen when she opened the envelopes. The review from the reader in the desert southwest has not read this book as it was meant to be read--as another way of reading and seeing. Hart and Smith do not suggest that theirs is the only way to read the letters/poems, they suggest that there's another way to read them that has not been the tradtional way of reading. My graduate students loved this book, as do I, because it offers a fresh perspective. Few Dickinson books in the last 10 years have been truly original and different. Anyone with a true interest in Dickinson, not the passing interest some reviews here suggest, will read this book in conjunction with other Dickinson studies and will achieve her/his own perspective of the poet. Smith and Hart give us some wonderful ideas to ponder, whether or not we agree with them is not the point. The point is that we exercise our intellect and think.

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Summary: Passionate
Review: The most passionate letters I have ever read. Picked it up in the library and started copying down the letters! I bought it from the bookstore several days later. I am not a historian, just an admirer, and while poetry is beautiful, her letters are more easily understood by the layman. Letters only make up a small portion of the book, but it is worth it if your heart is lonely and deep.

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Summary: Emily Dickinson would have loved email
Review: This careful collection of amazing letters, and its informative introductions to each section, as well as its coda and notes, reinforces several things that fans of Dickinson likely already believe. Emily Dickinson's reputation was in many ways greatly distorted posthumously by her contemporary Mabel Loomis Todd, late-arriving dragon lady of the Dickinson menage (and eventual mistress of her brother Austin Dickinson, Susan's husband) and originator of "many of the fallacies that have since become Dickinson legend." (p.204) Emily Dickinson was capable of deep and durable friendship. She treasured her own company, and also that of a few close friends. She adored her brother's wife, Susan Huntington Dickinson, who lived next-door in Amherst. The feeling was mutual. They were attached to one another, and utterly loyal. There were no telephones then. Dickinson needed to 'talk' or at least - to write. Some of the letters - mere bits of writing - were on homely topics. I can guess with certainty that were they alive today, they would have thought nothing of communicating throughout the day via email. So we are all of us in good company.

My only mild gripe about this book is the use of the word "intimate" in the subtitle, and the unsubtle choice of the (chaste yet suggestive) photograph by Imogen Cunningham for the cover. This material probably doesn't need to be marketed that way. Dickinson devotees will read this book without the implied promise of sex, and those who don't read Dickinson will be disappointed if they are expecting heated-up correspondence, or in any way sexualized letters from Emily Dickinson to her best friend. These letters are passionate, sometimes playful, and sometimes pedestrian. One reads them for a window on the writer - who was "intimate" with life.

A thoroughly worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Scholarship
Review: This collection has historic significance in Dickinson studies not only because it highlights the interesting and complex relationship between Emily Dickinson and Susan Dickinson, her sister-in-law, but also because of the way the letter-poems appear here in print. Hart and Smith took pains to present as best they could in print the original line breaks and other features of Dickinson's manuscripts, and this causes the poems to run down the page in long narrow columns, in many cases. Like Johnson's restoration of the dashes did in 1955, this edition of letter-poems to one correspondent changes the way we "see" a Dickinson poem physically on the page. The form presented here is as equally fascinating as the content of the letter-poems themselves. Superb!