Lyric Time: Dickinson and the Limits of Genre

Lyric Time offers a detailed critical reading of a particularly difficult poet, an analysis of the dominance of temporal structures and concerns in the body of her poetry, and finally, an important original contribution to a theory of the lyric. Poised between analysis of Emily Dickinson’s poetic texts and theoretical inquiry, Lyric Time suggests that the temporal problems of Dickinson’s poems are frequently exaggerations of the features that distinguish the lyric as a genre. It is precisely the distance some of Dickinson’s poems go toward the far end of coherence, precisely the outlandishness of their extremity, that allows us to see, magnified, the fine workings of more conventional lyrics, writes Sharon Cameron. Lyric Time is written for the literary audience at large–Dickinsonians, romanticists, theorists, anyone interested in American poetry, or in poetry at all, and especially anyone who admires a risky book that succeeds.