White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson Book

Surprisingly good--on a number of counts: Dickinson's poetry, life, her intensity; Higginson's importance in history, his work as an abolitionist, leader of the first all-black (former slaves) regiment in the Civil War; his writings on and support of women's equal rights...

Wineapple is never condescending nor overly interpretive; she gives both Higginson and Dickinson their due, is respectful of these larger-than-life figures, and is as good at writing about the poems as she is about Higginson's Civil War regiment, his fight against slavery--on the battlefield and off--and his later-in-life search for fulfillment. What I especially like is how we are able to view these two personalities very much within the context of their time; she doesn't force a modern-day lens onto them as some biographers would do. In other words, there is a lot of correction and restoration when it comes to Higginson as he has been much disparaged over the years by Dickinson scholars and Historians alike.

Wineapple is also very good at tracking the soap-opera-ish struggle for control of the publication of Dickinson's many poems: the key players being her sister Lavinia; Mabel Todd (who'd had a 12-yr affair with Emily's brother, Austin); Sue, Austin's wife; and Higginson. The poems were copied and altered to various extents by Todd and Higginson, yet Wineapple also lets us see the work they were doing within the context of their time. Emily Dickinson's poems were so extraordinary, nothing like them had ever been witnessed (they felt they had to 'prepare the public').

One is left with love and admiration for the reclusive Dickinson: though she rarely leaves her father's house, her life and her art are wholly her own. She is her own Master (the term she gives Higginson): sharply intelligent, compassionate, true to herself and her poetry. I can't help but be awed by this astonishing woman and poet.