From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
Message-Id: <58335157.350d6027@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 12:23:52 EST
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
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Subject: A 1913 defense of ED
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I've just come across an article in The Atlantic Monthly, January, 1913,
defending Emily Dickinson.  In an article titled "The Poetry of Emily
Dickinson," Martha Hale Shackford writes of ED's unique powers.

The article begins:  "Not long ago a distinguished critic, reviewing Father
Tabb's poetry, remarked 'At his most obvious affinity, Emily Dickinson, I can
only glance.  It seems to me that he contains in far finer form pretty much
everything that is valuable in her thought.'  Are we thus to lose the fine
significance of poetic individuality?"

Shackford then proceeds to discuss Dickinson in a way that I suspect most
emwebbers would respond to with "right on"!  There obviously is a context in
which her article was written.  I don't know enough about what was going on in
and around 1913, but I ask myself "Who was Father Tabb?"

Web address for Shackford's article:

        http://theatlantic.com/atlantic/atlweb/poetry/emilyd/shackfor.htm

Louis Forsdale