Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar
Cristanne Miller's study is...densely researched and...living and contemporary in its readings of the poems. Miller works from the assumption that Dickinson sees herself 'oppositionally, defining her position in the world negatively, by distance from some social construct or law'. And Miller shows how those negations have a constructive role. (Tom PaulinLondon Review of Books)Miller is such an exciting reader...Close and thoughtful interpretation is combined with good humor throughout [the book]...[It] is readable and often delightful. Like Dickinson herself, Miller is quietly full of surprise...Cristanne Miller discovers Dickinson 'in words (her own)' (to use Adrienne Rich's phrase); she sees a self-conscious, determined, decisive Emily Dickinson, not someone so stricken with grief or pain or even her own sensitivity that she doesn't quite know what she's doing or what she's writing. Reminding us that Dickinson called her poems her `letter to the World,' Miller views the poems as communicative, not solipsistic, acts. (Martha Nell SmithWomen's Review of Books)Reading this book makes one realize just how clumsy our approach to Dickinson's poetry has always been. Rather than casting about for specific referents for Dickinson's highly ambiguous references, Miller provides a method for understanding and appreciating the extraordinary suggestiveness of Dickinson's work...This text should revise our approach to Dickinson, laying the groundwork for the meticulous examination of fundamental language use that her poems demand. (Choice)Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammarwill be especially welcome...Miller's study ultimately shows the linguistic canniness and aesthetic consciousness with which Emily Dickinson consistently distilled "amazing sense/From ordinary Meanings." (Sandra M. GilbertAmerican Literary Realism)Miller shows readers what is actually at stake in this idiosyncratic verse and maps better than anyone to date the links between the grammatical choices and literary identity. (David PorterNineteenth-Century Literature)This grammar is neither too dry nor reductive nor abstract. Rather, it provides a way to organize Miller's insights into the particular moments and larger implications of Dickinson's art...Miller's understanding of Dickinson as a woman poet is especially convincing, especially compelling...A fine book: satisfying and stimulating. (Suzanne JuhaszLegacy)By returning us to fundamental issues of style, Miller focuses our attention on the relation between gender identity and literary creation...The accuracy of insight Miller brings to bear on Dickinson's "cryptic revelations" compels us to turn again to the poems to assess the revolutionary force of Dickinson's gender-inflected, elliptic grammar of disguise. (Joanne Feit DiehlTulsa Studies in Women's Literature)