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EMILY DICKINSON
The Unpublished Poet
The Atlantic prides itself on its
history of bringing new literary talents to light. But early in its existence the
magazine failed to recognize the potential of one of the most formidable
American poets of the nineteenth century: Emily Dickinson.
In the April, 1862, issue of The Atlantic Monthly there appeared a
lengthy article titled "Letter to a Young Contributor," by Thomas
Wentworth Higginson. Higginson—an eminent Bostonian known both as a
literary critic and as an active abolitionist—offered advice to
enthusiastic young writers. The Dickinson family subscribed to The
Atlantic Monthly, and it seems likely that Emily would have read the
article. Much of the letter touches upon themes that were crucial to
Dickinson's project: in it Higginson described editors as "always
hungering and thirsting after novelties" and receptive to "new or obscure
contributors"; he remarked on "the magnificent mystery of words" and
praised writing that can "palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination
of the syllables"; and he extolled compression as a virtue—"Oftentimes a
word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter;
there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a
sentence."
Dickinson apparently took Higginson to be a kindred spirit (despite his
advice that writers reduce themselves "to short allowance of parentheses
and dashes") and wrote to him that same month, enclosing several poems.
Thus began a correspondence that lasted until Dickinson's death, some
twenty years later. Higginson was baffled by Dickinson—he recognized her
unique talent but called her poetic gait "spasmodic"—and did not make
efforts to publish her work. When the first volume of Dickinson's poetry
was published, posthumously, in 1890, it enjoyed enormous popularity, and
Higginson—who found this success "curious" and confessed that "even at
this day I still stand somewhat bewildered"—published an article in the
October, 1891, Atlantic, titled "Emily Dickinson's Letters," that
quoted much of the correspondence he received from the reclusive poet,
including several of her poems.
Higginson may have been baffled by the idiosyncracies of Emily Dickinson's
verse and personality, but twenty-two years after Dickinson's poems were
first published, author and Wellesley professor Martha Hale Shackford
hailed her in The Atlantic as "one of our most original writers, a force
destined to endure in American letters." Shackford's "The Poetry of Emily
Dickinson" offers an interesting glimpse at the literary world's emerging
awareness of Dickinson's talent—and also reveals the extent to which Emily
Dickinson's early editors felt the need to regularize her eccentric
punctuation.
