One Art takes us behind Bishop's formal sophistication and reserve, displaying to the full the gift for friendship, the striving for perfection, and the passionate, questing, rigorous spirit that made her a great poet.

    Here the characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word which perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.

    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.