"This book has made me laugh every time I've picked it up. Legault 'translates' Emily Dickinson's complete poems (numerated to match the R.W. Franklin edition), updating her verses for the Twitter generation. Think shorter. More direct. Dickinson's dash-riddled meditations are whittled down to their core, leaving the reader with the no-frills heart of what she was getting at, as in: 'I'm sad that I'm not happy' or 'I'm not very worldly. I'm kind of New Englandy.' Read it straight through! Read it with the originals in tow! Either way it's a party."
Publisher McSweeney's
Publication Date 2012-08-14
Section Humor / Poetry / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Daniel B.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781936365982
Perfect for the poetry fan who is short on time, The Emily Dickinson Reader offers Paul Legault’s ingenious and madcap one-line renderings of each of Dickinson’s 1,789 poems. Take that familiar chestnut, #314, a la Legault: “Hope is kind of like birds. In that I don’t have any.” Or the classic hymn, #615: “God likes to watch.”
As Dickinson herself said in #769 (basically, via our translator): “This dead person used to be a person!”—and The Emily Dickinson Reader is here to tell you what that person meant.
