Vesna’s Reviews > The Poems of Emily Dickinson > Status Update

I would not paint — a picture —
I’d rather be the One
It’s bright impossibility
To dwell — delicious — on —
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare — celestial — stir —
Evokes so sweet a torment —
Such sumptuous — Despair —
(1st stanza)

Franklin, whose research and updated edition improves on the dates in Johnson, records 1862 as one of Dickinson's most prolific years with 227 poems; the others were 1863 (295 poems), 1865 (229), and 1861 and 1864 with close to 100 poems each. Nearly 1,000 poems, one-half of her extant poetry, in this span of only 5 years! I'll be spending a long time revelling in each of these golden years.

Read the poems through 1861. The year of 1861 is clearly the beginning of her prime. Gem after gem... I am in heaven.