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Literature and Medicine
Wider Than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson
A revealing perspective on how Emily Dickinson helps readers cope with suffering
Emily Dickinson is known as a poet who presses at the limits of perception and expresses in brilliantly compact, memorable language extremes of both anguish and ecstasy. Her frequent attention to pain and death, like her reclusive tendencies, has led many to dismiss her as “morbid.” Biographers and critics, however, have shown how she used her writing and her own acquaintance with pain to reach out consolingly to sufferers. In a widely varied collection of personal reminiscences, tributes, and scholarly essays, editors Cindy MacKenzie and Barbara Dana offer richly revealing perspectives on how the exquisite language in the poems and letters of Emily Dickinson helps readers cope with suffering. The essays featured in Wider than the Sky range from fresh scholarly analyses to highly personal essays and meditations, each offering thoughts on the emotional, spiritual, and physical healing power gained from reading Dickinson. MacKenzie and Dana invite readers to reflect on how we respond to poems, how they enter into the core of our consciousness, and how we draw strength from what Dickinson called “the Art of Peace.” Wider than the Sky, a resource for Dickinson fans as well as anyone coping with pain, is an important addition to the Literature and Medicine Series.
Emily Dickinson is known as a poet who presses at the limits of perception and expresses in brilliantly compact, memorable language extremes of both anguish and ecstasy. Her frequent attention to pain and death, like her reclusive tendencies, has led many to dismiss her as “morbid.” Biographers and critics, however, have shown how she used her writing and her own acquaintance with pain to reach out consolingly to sufferers. In a widely varied collection of personal reminiscences, tributes, and scholarly essays, editors Cindy MacKenzie and Barbara Dana offer richly revealing perspectives on how the exquisite language in the poems and letters of Emily Dickinson helps readers cope with suffering. The essays featured in Wider than the Sky range from fresh scholarly analyses to highly personal essays and meditations, each offering thoughts on the emotional, spiritual, and physical healing power gained from reading Dickinson. MacKenzie and Dana invite readers to reflect on how we respond to poems, how they enter into the core of our consciousness, and how we draw strength from what Dickinson called “the Art of Peace.” Wider than the Sky, a resource for Dickinson fans as well as anyone coping with pain, is an important addition to the Literature and Medicine Series.
- GenresPoetry
150 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 14, 2013
"The wound we experience opens us up to a place where boundaries are dissolved, where the oppositions we normally see as separate become intermingled. In fact, we enter a spiritual dimension that, as disorienting and painful as it might be, has the capacity to bring us enlightenment and peace....Thus the wound becomes the site of profound significance, with the power to integrate and connect us rather than to fragment and isolate us, but the journey requires the utmost patience and solitude."
Tis good - the looking back on Grief
though the Woe you have Today
Be larger - as the sea
Exceeds it's Unremembered Drop
They're Water - equally
Tis good - the looking back on Grief
though the Woe you have Today
Be larger - as the sea
Exceeds it's Unremembered Drop
They're Water - equally
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews