Volume 49, Number 1 · January 17, 2002
Emily Dickinson's Secret Lives
By Christopher Benfey
My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson
by Alfred Habegger
Random House, 764 pp., $35.00
Among the 295 poems that Emily Dickinson is believed to have written during 1863, at the height of the Civil War, are several arresting short lyrics that address the subject of art as a response to inflicted pain. 'Essential Oils—are wrung—,' she writes in one poem. 'The Attar from the Rose/Be not expressed by Suns—alone—/It is the gift of Screws.' And in another, less frequently quoted:
Review, 4184 words
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