I am upset by the Dickinson section of this site. For the most part I'm impressed with the accuracy of the Lit. Network, but not in this area. There are inaccuacies in Dickinson's mini-bio, where it appears that rather than acually learn about her life, whoever wrote it just repeated the common misperceptions about her (like that she wrote in secret and was never published). It is also disturbing that after all of these years, people still ignore Emily's intent in her unconventional spellling, capitalization and punctuation. Original versions of Emily's poems aren't hard to come by, they've been compiled, but people still insist on referring to the "corrected" (I say mutilated) versions her family first put out. She worked and re-worked her poetry endlessly, none of her dashes or seeming "mistakes" are unintentional. No serious scholar would ever use these versions of the poems, why should this site? For that matter, who invented the titles used? Not Dickinson, I assure you. Putting fake titles on the poems only makes it harder to find the right ones.


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