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If Morrison saw the title of Paradise as, in her words, “interrogative” or ironic, with the word possibly followed by a question mark, she surely would have moved those descriptors onto the title of her 2003 novel, Love. Love? Love? Critic Anne Mihan called a book with “a decidedly political impetus” (Mihan 24). For critic Missy Kubitschek, Paradise exemplifies such dominant African beliefs as that the common and the communal is the sacred; that distinguishing between the “living” and the “dead” is often (as here) arbitrary; and that the self and other selves are frequently inseparable (Kubitchek 22–3). In Paradise, the ramifications of Morrison’s African beliefs are less obtrusive. Instead, what comes across are the emphases on what Rebecca Ferguson calls “mother–daughter relationships” — it is this critic who comments “there is very little about relationships between mothers (or fathers) and living sons … much more about mothers and daughters: Connie and Mary Magna, Mavis and Sal, Delia and Patricia and Billie Delia, Pallas and Dee Dee, Seneca and Jean” (Ferguson 97, 240). Much evidence of this compatibility occurs after the women have been killed, and then are (presumably) resurrected.

James Baldwin’s death in 1987, the year Beloved was published, made the African American literary community more sensitive than usual to the fact that very few African American writers — poets, novelists, dramatists, critics — ever won the truly prestigious prizes of the academic world. Accordingly, when Beloved was nominated for the National Book Award, but then lost out to Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story, readers who knew the Morrison novel were incensed. Other novels nominated for that prize seemed to be non-contenders — Alice McDermott’s That Night, Philip Roth’s The Counterlife, and Howard Norman’s The Northern Lights. Led by poet June Jordan and critic Houston A. Baker, Jr., nearly 50 African American writers signed an extensive letter of protest which appeared in the New York Times. It was an unusual mark of unified support for both Beloved and for Morrison.

Morrison’s fascination with building novels around a folktale continued as she wrote her fourth book, Tar Baby, published in 1981. Many of her comments about the folktale appeared separate from the novel, however. She described a kind of fear she felt when the concept of that “baby” — a girl child — made from sticky tar by a white man was used to lure, and catch, the necessarily black Br’er Rabbit character. The tale became a narrative of men pitted against each other, the black man less powerful, in the attempts to capture the desirable, but false, “baby.” As she explained

William Carlos Williams was first of all a writer-not a poet, essayist, or novelist. "Life isn't any more poetry than prose," he mused in a late essay,' looking back on a career that included over twenty collections of poems and an equal number of books in prose. During the Twenties, years of personal and artistic ferment for Williams, he wrote seven books of prose to one of poetry. His interest in the experimental, the new as a means of communicating, is nowhere more evident than in The Great American Novel (1923). Williams' experiments with the reciprocity between poetry and prose would culminate in Paterson, the five-book epic poem appearing between 1943 and 1958. But already in the Twenties he was an eager critic of contemporary proseHemingway, Ford, McAlmon, Stein, Joyce, Anderson. By 1923 he had voiced dissatisfaction with his own first prose collection, Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920): "their fault is their dislocation of sense, often complete."2 He disliked the weak structure of the improvisations, the incomplete transitions; but he admired the dominant themes in the book: "I began there and then to revalue experience, to understand what I was at." In Spring and All (1923) Williams continued his search for an effective mode, this time a reasonably conventional prose mixed with poems. That he was fascinated by the differences in poetry and prose is clear from his many distinctions between the two. His interest in prose as a viable-a forceful-writing form had been evident as early as 1921 when he wrote admiringly of the work of James Joyce

Any merely factual account of Hemingway’s marrying Pauline Pfeiffer omits the emotional nuances of the pair’srelationship once Hadley had bowed out. Just as Hemingway had considered suicide before his wedding to Hadley, so he wrote to Pauline in November of 1926 that he was feeling very low, depressed, guilty, and he was not sure that he had the right to marry again. Part of his angst seemed to come from Pauline’s assertion that she was returning to New York (from Arkansas) to resume her work for Vogue: in his mind, the only reason she would leave Arkansas would be to join him.1

Afterwar. War’s ending and the effects of trauma. Criticism by E. Fred Carlisle, Martin T. Buinicke, Paul Fussell, Steven Trout, Philip Beidler, M. Wynn Thomas, and Jerome Loving. Poems discussed “The Return of the Heroes,” “Long, Too Long America,” “As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods,” “Dirge for Two Veterans,” “Old War Dreams,” “Camps of Green,” “My Legacy,” and others.

For all Hemingway’sse If-de finition as writer (“I loved to write very much and was never happier than when doing it,”1 he told Perkins), after 1940, he spent great amounts of time worrying about alimony and income taxes, and staying ahead of his financial responsibilities. Keeping the Finca going cost $1000 a month, Pauline’salimony was $500 monthly, and he figured his income tax at something over 62 percent of his net. In May of 1943, for instance, he wrote to Perkins that he had “had to pay $160,000 to the government for writing For Whom the Bell Tolls.”2

Whitman’s Romance with Work. Using David Herreshoff as a guide to mid-nineteenth-century economics, Whitman’s political and subject matter concerns are shown clearly in one of his major poems in the 1855 Leaves of Grass. Discussion of “A Song for Occupations,” the second poem in the original collection, shows the poet’s unfeigned love of workmen and workwomen, mechanics, and farmers. By the later collections of Leaves of Grass, this key poem had disappeared into the next hundred of poems. Related here and in Chapter 2 to “Song of Myself” and the Transcendental movement.

It was getting to Hemingway, the reviewers’ chary and catty commentary, even before excerpts from Stein’sThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Writing candidly, as he claimed he always did, to Max Perkins (who by now had become not only his editor at Scribner’sbut his fishing friend in Key West), Hemingway ridiculed the kind of personal attacks his critics (including Stein) had been making. In July 26, 1933, he wrote about the Stein excerpt and then segued into his own third-person defense: Poor old Hem the fragile one. 99 days in the sun on the gulf stream. 54 swordfish. Seven in one day. A 468 pounder in 65 minutes, alone, no help except them holding me around the waist and pouring buckets of water on my head. Two hours and twenty minutes of straight hell with another. A 343 pounder that jumped 44 times, hooked in the bill. I killed him in an hour and forty five minutes. Poor fragile old Hem posing as a fisherman again. Weigh 187 lbs. Down from 211 —//I’m going to write damned good memoirs when I write them because I’m jealous of no one, have a rat trap memory and the documents.1

After nearly four years of being lovers, Martha Gellhorn married Hemingway on November 21, 1940, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace, and friends gave the couple a celebratory dinner of roast moose.1 Pauline’sdivorce was final a few weeks before that time, on November 4, after Hemingway had finally agreed in May to pay her $500 a month alimony. As he had during his break with Hadley and before his marriage to Pauline, Hemingway had worked diligently —almost obsessively —on his writing. Depleted by the emotional arguments that marked not only his relationship with Pauline but increasingly with Martha, he buried himself in the writing that was attempting to mine what he had learned and experienced from being in Spain. Again, it was as if his psyche ran from the personal turmoil, or perhaps the personal turmoil made possible his almost frantic immersion in the writing. Hemingway knew that he needed to score with the Spanish Civil War work, or else he might lose his preeminent place in modern American writing.

After Whitman’s first paralytic stroke in 1873 his body recovered very slowly but his fame surged, especially in England. His mother died in 1873. Among many, James E. Miller, Jr., and Roger Asselineau saw great artistic change in Whitman’s later poems. Discussion of “Prayer of Columbus,” “Gods,” “Perfections,” “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” “I Sit and Look Out,” and others; also “Specimen Days.”

In spring, 1925, when Hemingway and Fitzgerald met, the famous Scott found himself enthusiastically talking to Ernest about his becoming a Scribner author.1 Once that idea embedded itself in Hemingway’smind, his exuberance about In Our Time’sbeing published by Liveright began to fade. Although he did not mention breaking his three-book contract with the latter company, Ernest knew that Liveright had the option on his second novel only if they bought it; if they didn’t want that manuscript, the contract would be invalid. Hemingway was sure the manuscript he was now calling The Sun Also Rises would be a big novel (at least on the comparatively modest scale he was imagining); he knew that he did not want that book to be the second one Liveright would see. For their advance of $200 for In Our Time, the company hardly deserved his first serious novel.

This chapter, The Horrors of American War. From Whitman’s traveling to the battlegrounds in search of his brother and then working and living in Washington to visit soldiers in the forty hospitals there. Ty Hawkins, Drew Gilpin Faust on the war. “By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flames,” “A March in the Ranks, Hard-Prest,” “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One night,” and other poems.

Using Wilkerson’s Caste and Isenberg’s White Trash, along with Andrew Lawson and William Dow, the Whitmans’ economic position becomes clear. Walt Whitman’s education and training as printer, newswriter, and school teacher in Brooklyn and congruent parts of New York.

Given the increasing attention on the occurrence of microplastics in the environment, and the potential envi-ronmental threats they pose, there is a need for researchers to move quickly from basic understanding to applied science that supports decision makers in finding feasible mitigation measures and solutions. At the same time, they must provide sufficient, accurate and clear information to the media, public and other relevant groups (e.g., NGOs). Key requirements include systematic and coordinated research efforts to enable evidence-based decision making and to develop efficient policy measures on all scales (national, regional and global). To achieve this, collaboration between key actors is essential and should include researchers from multiple disciplines, policy-makers, authorities, civil and industry organizations, and the public. This further requires clear and informative communication processes, and open and continuous dialogues between all actors. Cross-discipline dialogues between researchers should focus on scientific quality and harmonization, defining and accurately communi-cating the state of knowledge, and prioritization of topics that are critical for both research and policy, with the common goal to establish and update action plans for holistic benefit. In Norway, cross-sectoral collaboration has been fundamental in supporting the national strategy to address plastic pollution. Researchers, stakeholders and the environmental authorities have come together to exchange knowledge, identify knowledge gaps, and set targeted and feasible measures to tackle one of the most challenging aspects of plastic pollution: microplastic. In this article, we present a Norwegian perspective on the state of knowledge on microplastic research efforts. Norway’s involvement in international efforts to combat plastic pollution aims at serving as an example of how key actors can collaborate synergistically to share knowledge, address shortcomings, and outline ways forward to address environmental challenges. publishedVersion

Whitman’s Life as “Poet” shows his movement into literary circles, being visited by Thoreau and Alcott, spending sociable evenings at Pfaff’s in New York, moving toward the third printing of Leaves of Grass in Boston. New poems related to Brooklyn and New York City, and adding more than a hundred new poems to the collection—“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” “Children of Adam,” the “Calamus” group.

A multi‐country outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes ST6 linked to blanched frozen vegetables (bfV) took place in the EU (2015–2018). Evidence of food‐borne outbreaks shows that L. monocytogenes is the most relevant pathogen associated with bfV. The probability of illness per serving of uncooked bfV, for the elderly (65–74 years old) population, is up to 3,600 times greater than cooked bfV and very likely lower than any of the evaluated ready‐to‐eat food categories. The main factors affecting contamination and growth of L. monocytogenes in bfV during processing are the hygiene of the raw materials and process water; the hygienic conditions of the food processing environment (FPE); and the time/Temperature (t/T) combinations used for storage and processing (e.g. blanching, cooling). Relevant factors after processing are the intrinsic characteristics of the bfV, the t/T combinations used for thawing and storage and subsequent cooking conditions, unless eaten uncooked. Analysis of the possible control options suggests that application of a complete HACCP plan is either not possible or would not further enhance food safety. Instead, specific prerequisite programmes (PRP) and operational PRP activities should be applied such as cleaning and disinfection of the FPE, water control, t/T control and product information and consumer awareness. The occurrence of low levels of L. monocytogenes at the end of the production process (e.g. < 10 CFU/g) would be compatible with the limit of 100 CFU/g at the moment of consumption if any labelling recommendations are strictly followed (i.e. 24 h at 5°C). Under reasonably foreseeable conditions of use (i.e. 48 h at 12°C), L. monocytogenes levels need to be considerably lower (not detected in 25 g). Routine monitoring programmes for L. monocytogenes should be designed following a risk‐based approach and regularly revised based on trend analysis, being FPE monitoring a key activity in the frozen vegetable industry. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The 6 July 2011 keynote address at the 11th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in Lyon, France, this article explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's natural affinity for sentence writing. From This Side of Paradise through The Great Gatsby and on into lesser-known contributions to Esquire in the late 1930s, Fitzgerald demonstrated that he was first and foremost a stylist and that the sentence, as Gertrude Stein recognized, was his métier. His style changed over the course of his career, but the essential components of his sentence writing remained the same: he believed in symbolism and imagery and in evoking mood and feeling. In the end, the best place to appreciate his talent for conveying both ideas and sentiments in sentence structures may be his Notebooks, in which he drafted some of his best-known, apothegm-like lines, including “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy” and “There are no second acts in American lives.”

Reminiscent of the Arthurian cycle, the story collection focuses on the lives of paisano members of California culture. During the illnesses of Steinbeck’s parents, he and Carol become care givers. Steinbeck writes his first excellent story, “The Red Pony,” and the other stories grouped under that title. His agents place two of the four stories for payment.

Steinbeck studies labor unrest in the Salinas Valley, and writes stories for newspapers. His works In Dubious Battle and Of Mice and Men result from this information. Both are well reviewed; Of Mice and Men becomes a Broadway play and wins awards. Of Mice and Men becomes his first Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

Steinbeck undergoes a process of learning to write good stories and immersion in the American idiomatic language. He develops respect for writing teacher Edith Mirrielees and friendships with other Stanford writing students. The Pastures of Heaven makes use of the Salinas Valley. He forms a friendship with Ed Ricketts and marries Carol Henning.

Throughout Steinbeck’s writing, he uses characters based on Ricketts. After his friend’s accidental death when his car stalled on the railroad tracks, he increases his writing about “Doc,” often the Ricketts figure. Gwyn Steinbeck divorces Steinbeck soon after Ricketts’ death, taking their two sons back to New York. Steinbeck writes The Wayward Bus and the lengthy “About Ed Ricketts.” The latter essay appears as a new segment of Steinbeck’s The Log from The Sea of Cortez. He later finishes the paisano saga by writing Sweet Thursday, a postmodern commentary on Cannery Row, again featuring a Ricketts-like character.

After some health episodes, Steinbeck begins reflective writing about his country—and his role in it. Rather than living abroad, as he and Elaine did for the better part of a year, he returns to the United States with enthusiasm. He writes this difficult philosophical novel in less than six months. In his mind, this book works in tandem with his Travels with Charley in Search of America—which he begins immediately after finishing the formal novel.

Morrison’s last two novels — A Mercy in 2008 and Home in 2012 — are comparatively short books. One of the reasons for their brevity is the author’s use of innovative and unusual structures. By choosing to center the reader’s attention on the language of each character, as she does in A Mercy, Morrison strips the narrative movement down to still focus points. Sometimes told by one of the other half dozen narrators but more often by Florens herself, the story of her great love for the blacksmith — as well as her enraged punishment of him — provides continuity that spins outward from a vortex of emotion. In Florens’ six sections of the 12-part narrative, over a third of the novel, she repeatedly provides for the reader the scene of her mother’s giving her away, as well as the account of what the blacksmith has done to her life. (No reader could distill the fabric of such earlier Morrison novels as Song of Solomon or Beloved into such a brief summary.)

Morrison survived the year 1992 with its three books ( Jazz, Race-ing Justice, and Playing in the Dark) but it was difficult. She got very little new writing done. In fact, since Beloved had won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Morrison had been on the reading and lecturing circuit — and she had also been the recipient of important literary prizes in addition to the Pulitzer. In 1990, for instance, she was asked to deliver the first Chazen Lecture at the University of Wisconsin, the Charter Lecture at the University of Georgia, and the Clark Lectures at Trinity College in Cambridge. That same year she received the Chubb Fellowship at Yale University, and the Chianti Ruffino Antico Fattore International Literary Prize. Perhaps it should have come as no surprise, then, that in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — the first United States African American writer to be so honored, and the first United States woman to be a recipient since Pearl Buck had received the award many decades earlier.

She was born Chloe Wofford in February 1931, to the wintry Lorain, Ohio, weather — and to her family, which included the Willises, her maternal grandparents and great-grandmother, as well as her parents and older sister Lois. In the steelworkers’ neighborhood of mixed-race, lower-class people hard work was valued. Few people understood that lives elsewhere could be marked by a family’s accumulation of wealth, not by their day-to-day earnings. But for these Lorain residents (some from Poland and central Europe; others from Mexico, Italy, and Greece; others — like the Woffords — from the American South), work or the promise of work comprised a primary element of the American dream. What such an ethic and such a household meant to the bright Chloe Ardelia Wofford was an atmosphere of reading and learning, of being useful. Morrison remembers that when she began school at five, she was one of the few children who could already read. In sixth grade, she was chosen to read to “the partially sighted” (Con II, 132). One of her middle-school teachers sent home a note to her mother which said, “You and your husband would be remiss in your duties if you do not see to it that this child goes to college” (Als 68).

Morrison’s immersion in the world of African belief systems and its centuries of lore fueled her decision to attempt a novel about the multi-generational “Dead” family. She kept them American, and African American; she started this third novel, Song of Solomon, with the families of both Macon Dead and Pilate Dead living in Michigan, a state still segregated in the 1940s but (probably) less racist than would have been a state located in the deep South. Reifying the experiences she had known as she grew up close to Lake Erie at the northern edge of Ohio, Morrison created the “better” part of this Michigan town as the site of Macon Dead’s large home, and set it in contrast to “Darling Street,” where Pilate and her unconventional family of women lived a seemingly less stable life. (Pilate did not believe in either paying for, or having, modern technology such as electricity or city water; she was announcing to the world that she was a creature from a different culture, whether a griot, an ancestor, or a witch; her brother Macon, in contrast, had assimilated to the point that he took on the persona of a successful white business man, though he behaved cruelly to his fragile wife and daughters.)

Morrison’s mining of the dimensions of folktale that appeared so prominently in both Song of Solomon and Tar Baby had proved less expansive than she had hoped. She found that many of her readers were still caught up in an all-too-frequently bifurcated world, and much of that world’s bifurcation was premised on a black–white racial division that seemed to come naturally to readers’ minds because Toni Morrison was herself black. Even if Morrison had considered some of her uses of the folk ironic, readers seemed incapable of finding that irony when the African American author was drawing characters who were similarly African American.

There are few more memorable wives in twentieth-century American culture than Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, who was married to the successful young author F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1920. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, had appeared a few weeks before their marriage. Because of his popularization of the Jazz Age, complete with its New York partying, elite college society, and alcohol, dancing, and flappers, readers tend to place his beautiful bride with the exotic name--Zelda--within those fictional contexts. In reality, Zelda Sayre had never been to New York City until she went there, accompanied by her older married sister, to wed Fitzgerald. Neither had she been abroad, nor had she gone to college. In fact, she had seldom spent a night away from her father's house. Zelda Sayre was in fact a Montgomery, Alabama, girl, whose father was a judge there in the state capitol. But more than that, Zelda Sayre was a highly visible southern belle, soon to be immortalized in literature as the essence of the early-twentieth-century's thoroughly modern American woman. To change the definition of Zelda from "flapper" to "belle" is to move from the commercialized and risque image of woman as fast, easy--a "speed"--to that of the highly desirable but more traditional and consistently protected beauty. Flirtatious and flamboyant, the southern belle was often a local celebrity. She was the woman one courted, although she was never assumed to be available. In the candid words of Virginia Foster Durr, a contemporary of Zelda's who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, belles "were almost like visiting movie stars.... the epitome of success." Zelda Sayre, Durr wrote, "was just gorgeous. She had a golden glow around her.... The boys would line up the whole length of the ballroom to dance with her for one minute. She was just pre-eminent. And we recognized it." (1) The belle is peculiar to the South, and Fitzgerald, who grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota; Buffalo, New York; and Princeton, would have known little about belledom. Requisites of this time-consuming status at the close of the nineteenth century included birth into a certain social class along with the means to afford suitable clothes, train travel, and leisure. Several dozen callers on Sunday afternoons, as many letters daily, boxes of long-stemmed red roses, small square boxes of corsages, and the offers of fraternity pins, club insignias, and engagement rings--not to mention the actual dates, parties, and dances--kept the true belle busy from morning to night and into the next morning. The orderliness of the custom may have been difficult for outsiders to fathom, but within each social circle, rituals were firm: "town girls" could not be belles (again, social class--with a proper and recognizable family name--was crucial); neither could "fast" girls. The existence of the belle was a tribute to the power, and the self-conceit, of the higher classes within the South: it reaffirmed patriarchy in that status as a belle was entirely dependent upon the social standing of the girl's father. (2) Having money was not the most significant part of being from the right social class. In the South people knew which families were which, and in Montgomery the Sayres were important people. Being popular as a teenager and a debutante was a way of ensuring that the woman in question was the right sort of girl, a suitable candidate for marriage, for, ultimately, the belle was to take on the roles of wife and, particularly, of mother. Southern bloodlines, like southern manners, were not to be corrupted. Stemming from the aftermath of the Civil War, when the barriers between the white and black races became even more firmly entrenched--and horribly enforced through lynching--the politics of marriage grew increasingly significant. Because fortunes had been lost during both the Civil War and Reconstruction, social position was maintained largely on the basis of family name and through one family's partnership in marriage with another stable and well-placed family. …

els are valuable books. By helping readers to locate Faulkner's treatment of racial issues within his later novels?from Intruders in the Dust (1948) through The Reivers (1962)?Towner summarizes one of the more con troversial topics of recent Faulkner criticism. It is Kevin Riley's wide ranging assessment of the way Faulkner's fiction becomes a useful site for any consideration of history, text, and author, however, that deserves the label "ground-breaking." Railey approaches William Faulkner the author as the product of the ideology of his culture, both Lafayette County, Mississippi, and the South. Managing to provide discussions of his use of terms "paternal ism" and "liberalism" as the ideological grid for Faulkner's thinking, Rai ley weaves biography, the ramifications of history, and close readings of the novels of the major period into a well-argued study. He contends that even as Faulkner understood that paternalism "was a fading, residual ide ology and liberalism an increasingly emergent, then dominant one," his sympathies lay with the paternalism of the well-bred white culture in which he saw himself enmeshed. While Faulkner understood rationally the way change in ideology was necessary, he could not accept the unsta ble leadership that occurred within democratic liberalism. Railey writes

Emily Dickinson had no access to classes in writing (except the writing of argumentative essays or the working out of exercises of intricate stanzas, rhyme, and meters in a set poetic form). When she reached the surety of a set of lines like I have a Bird in spring Which for myself doth sing— The spring decoys …. In a serener Bright, In a more golden light I see Each little doubt and fear, Each little discord here Removed…. (Poem #4 Fr 59)

As Austin and Susan’s family grew, it became clear to the Dickinson family that the children’s best care-giver was Aunt Emily. Dickinson’s role with Ned, Mattie, and their friends is described lovingly by MacGregor Jenkins, who played with the Dickinson children, living nearby in the pastor’s house; his father officiated at the funerals of both Edward Dickinson and Emily. In his Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor, Jenkins draws a differently nuanced picture of the “exquisite, vibrant life” the poet led. Seen from her bedroom window as she lowered a basket of gingerbread to the waiting children, Aunt Emily was “a joyous person,” ready to help them build gypsy camp sites, providing news about the neighborhood to them (speaking of herself in third person), and sending notes to Mac’s parents addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Clergyman” or “Mr. and Mrs. Pastor” (Jenkins 35, 45, 58, 83). Jenkins recalled that Ned and Mattie’s aunt “was not shy” with the children and their friends (21).

The 1870s began the cycle Dickinson was hoping to avoid: she wrote on July 27, 1872, to the Norcross cousins, “Little Irish Maggie went to sleep this morning at six o’clock, just the time grandpa rises, and will rest in the grass at Northampton tomorrow. She has had a hard sickness, but her awkward little life is saved and gallant now. Our Maggie is helping her mother put her in the cradle …” (LII 496). The Dickinsons’ new maid, Maggie Maher, was doing her work of bridging elements of the community with the occupants of the Homestead, and while Dickinson’s somewhat patronizing tone (speaking of the teenager’s “awkward little life”) offends today’s reader, the diminution of the young woman’s body can be forgiven. It was a practice of sentimental writing to equate women’s lives with their childhoods: the trope of innocence was the aim. In this case, the daughter of James and Ellen Kelley was dead at 17.

Even though Dickinson spent another long period of months in Cambridge—from April of 1865 to October, she once again managed to write hundreds of consistently good poems. This total does not represent the flood of writing that 1863 had given her, with the poem count close to 300, but after a decline in 1864 to 98 poems, her production in 1865 continued on that same path. Aife Murray counts Dickinson’s total in 1863 as 295; in 1864, 98; and for 1865, 229 (Murray 80). Murray also quotes from contemporary poet Robert Creeley’s comment that Dickinson’s production here—already increased tremendously by the events of the war—was prompted by her eye condition. This is Creeley, “that’s when she goes for broke and writes Higginson. That’s when the authority of her ability must have utterly been possessed, possessive … And that’s of course the time too when she begins to make decisive changes in her whole proposal of herself to the world” (in Murray 81).

For all the critical attention to Dickinson’s composing the fascicles (a period that ran only from sometime in 1858 through months of 1864), there has been little commentary on the long pages of copied poems (called “sets”) which followed. There has been still less notice of the arrangements Dickinson used at the end of her career. A few critics have offered readings of her poetry based on the assumption that from the mid-seventies until her death, few lines separated “poem” from “letter.” But more radically and more recently, the composition of each whole—however defined—has begun to come under scrutiny.