Giving us a new sense of Dickinson's ways of being in her world, this book traces the perceptions of that world in the poetry and contributes to our pleasure in the performance of a virtuoso. Elizabeth Philips shows the imaginative uses the poet made of her own life but also the verifiable use of her responses to others--personal friends and relatives, historical and literary figures, and "nature's people"--in the play of language that registered her insights. The book is not a biography; it considers, instead, evidence of the poet's character and her character as a poet. Dickinson emerges...