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Tomb and Womb: Reading Contexture in Emily Dickinson's "Soft Prison"

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From: Legacy
Date: 20060101
Author:Davinroy, Elise

A letter written by Emily Dickinson is a unified whole of constituent parts, a fabric woven of prose and poetry designed for a specific audience. No "Word [is] dropped careless on a Page" (2: F1268), making each letter not merely a convenient vehicle-or envelope-into which she folded poems, but in its entirety an aesthetic creation.2 Martha Nell Smith has argued that Dickinson self-published through her correspondence, and this theory has opened up new lines of investigation in reading Dickinson's letters. Smith's focus is on the letter as material text, as object of production. Other ...

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