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The Gorgeous Nothings

Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems
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( 824 ratings, 120 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Gorgeous Nothings offers a unique glimpse into Emily Dickinson's creative process by showcasing her poetry and thoughts written on envelopes and scraps. The book is a striking visual presentation that highlights the intersection of her art with everyday materials, providing insight into the innovative way she approached her craft. It's a celebration of both her words and the unconventional physical formats she used.
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Format: Hardback
$9499
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you're fascinated by the intimate, visual side of poetry, as it presents Emily Dickinson's original manuscripts on delicately inscribed envelopes. This unique collection beautifully bridges the worlds of visual art and literature, offering a rare glimpse into the poet's personal creative process.

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The Gorgeous Nothings is a pivotal book: the first full-color publication of Emily Dickinson's complete envelope writings in facsimile from her visually stunning manuscripts, here in a deluxe, large-scale edition

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The Gorgeous Nothings - the first full-colour facsimile edition of Emily Dickinson's manuscripts ever to appear - is a deluxe edition of her late writings, presenting this crucially important, experimental late work exactly as she wrote it on scraps of envelopes. A never-before-possible glimpse into the process of one of our most important poets.

The book presents all the envelope writings - 52 - reproduced life-size in full colour both front and back, with an accompanying transcription to aid in the reading, allowing us to enjoy this little-known but important body of Dickinson's writing.

Envisioned by the artist Jen Bervin and made possible by the extensive research of the Dickinson scholar Marta L. Werner, this book offers a new understanding and appreciation of the genius of Emily Dickinson.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

The Gorgeous Nothings has been highly praised for presenting a fresh perspective on Emily Dickinson. Critics regard the edition as a work of art in its own right, providing poetry enthusiasts with a rare and valuable gift.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780811221757

Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 29 October 2013

Country: United States

Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Illustration: 110

Contributors:

  • Edited by Jen Bervin
  • Edited by Marta Werner
  • Preface by Susan Howe

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 30.0mm

Width: 246.0mm

Height: 310.0mm

Weight: 1523g

Pages: 272

About the Author

Arguably America's greatest poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published fewer than a dozen of her eighteen hundred poems during her lifetime. Jen Bervin's work includes The Dickinson Composites, The Desert, and Nets. Marta Werner's books include Emily Dickinson's Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces of Writing and Radical Scatters: An Electronic Archive of Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts. Author of more than a dozen books of poetry and two of literary criticism, Susan Howe's recent collection of poems That This, published by New Directions won the Bollingen Prize in 2011. Her earlier critical study, My Emily Dickinson, was re-issued in 2007 with an introduction by Eliot Weinberger. Three CDs in collaboration with the musician/composer David Grubbs, Thiefth, Souls of the Labadie Tract, and Frolic Architecture were released on the Blue Chopsticks label (2005; 2011). Howe held the Samuel P. Capen Chair in Poetry and the Humanities at the State University New York at Buffalo until her retirement in 2007. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999 and served as a Chancellor to the Academy of American Poets between 2000-2006. In fall, 2009 she was awarded a Fellowship to the American Academy at Berlin. Grenfell Press published a fine press edition of "Frolic Architecture with photographic prints by James Welling in 2009. Recently she was an Artist In Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In October, 2013 her word collages were exhibited at the Yale Union in Portland, Oregon, and in the Whitney Biennial Spring, 2014. A limited press edition of Tom Tit Tot (the word collages which amount to a series poem) with art work by R.H. Quaytman has just been published by MoMA in New York, and Spontaneous Particulars:The Telepathy of Archives, (2014) published by Christine Burgin and New Directions.

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