Unauthorized Editions: New American Poets Remediating Dickinson

Abstracts:

This essay examines recent volumes by new American poets that center on Emily Dickinson. Emerging poets Patricia Lockwood, Paul Legault, Janet Holmes, and Rebecca Hazelton read Dickinson by rewriting her, and by doing so, offer themselves as alternate versions of Dickinson, the essay argues. The essay uses Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin's concept of remediation to analyze contemporary poetry centering on Dickinson, and makes the argument that Dickinson's poetry has never not been remediated. At once multiplying and erasing Dickinson in their remediations of her, the contemporary poets examined here exemplify an emerging American poetics in which Dickinson's influence is both more immediate and more distant.