The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems

The Gorgeous Nothings makes the case that Emily Dickinson's late writing cannot be separated from the scraps she wrote it on, and it does so by reproducing those scraps rather than describing them.

Published in 2013 by New Directions and Christine Burgin in association with Granary Books, the large-format volume presents all fifty-two of Dickinson's envelope writings in full colour and at life size, front and back, each facing a transcription that preserves line breaks, angles and variant words. Marta Werner and Jen Bervin edited the book and supply the scholarly and visual apparatus, with a preface by Susan Howe; Bervin's design lets the torn flaps, folds and pencil marks read as compositional decisions. The trade edition follows a limited artist's-book edition issued by Granary Books, and it remains the standard reference for the envelope poems.

Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote most of these fragments in her final years, on envelopes cut, split and turned inside out. The facsimile approach has since been influential well beyond Dickinson studies; New Directions later drew a compact selection from it as Envelope Poems, and Bervin and Werner's editorial method is regularly cited in discussions of manuscript, materiality and visual poetics.