Molly's Staff Picks

My Emily Dickinson is a poet's book about the life and work of a fellow poet. Largely through the lens of one of her best-known poems, Howe reveals Dickinson to have been astutely aware of the literary community and tradition in which she wrote, even as she famously did so from the confines of her room, raising some profound questions about fame, isolation, and what defines a writer in life and in death. It's not an easy book; Howe writes both as a scholar and as a poet herself, her style a windy mix between academic and poetic as she weaves together pieces of Dickinson's influences and wide-reaching world. The result is a breathtaking and revelatory examination of a poet, a poem, and a life.

Anne Carson's Short Talks could be described as meditations, poems, or even simply "thoughts" -- but all of these terms imply a cuteness that is not found here. What is here is a scholarly sense of wonder at the seemingly mundane, the stirring of ancient things amid the contemporary, and a voice so lovely and matter-of-fact it seems no other words on her subjects will ever be necessary. These loosely defined topics range from "on Sylvia Plath" to "on the sensation of airplane take-off" to "on Ovid" to "on the truth to be had from dreams". They are just perfect.