Miss Emily

I had this large, glossy book on my wishlist for years and stumbled across it on Abebooks recently while looking for something else.  It arrived today from a bookshop in Ireland ... usually I buy second-hand, but this is a pristine copy, still in its shrink-wrap.

It's facsimiles of fragments of poem that Emily Dickinson wrote on envelopes and stuffed in her desk. Both sides of the envelopes are faithfully reproduced on recto and verso pages. Luckily, given the difficulty of deciphering her writing, the text is also presented in a more legible form. It's like peering into her mind as she composes, ideas swimming half-formed.

Had we our senses
Tho/But perhaps 'tis well they're not at Home
So intimate with Madness
He's liable with them
that's/'tis
Had we the eyes within our Head - s -
How prudent/well that we are Blind
We could not look opon the Earth - World
So utterly 
Unmoved