Decoding Emily Dickinson

Top scholar Helen Vendler joins us for a deep look at Dickinson.

The poet Emily Dickinson published virtually nothing in her lifetime, but wrote a universe. Nearly eighteen hundred poems, neatly pinned in handmade booklets in her 19th century seclusion.

But what power. And what a mind. Terse, abrupt, surprising, unsettling, flirtatious, savage - says top scholar Helen Vendler, who’s turnied her eye on Dickinson. Not to mention metaphysical, provocative, blasphemous, tragic and funny.

Helen Vendler is with today on Emily Dickinson.

So is this year’s Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Rae Armantrout, as we look at the poetry of Emily Dickinson
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

Helen Vendler, leading American poetry critic. She's professor of English at Harvard University, and author of "Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries." You can read an excerpt.

Rae Armantrout, Pulitzer prize-winning poet. She's a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego.  Listen back to our show with Rae on her Chesire poetics.