Twenty-five years after Emily Dickinson died, Will Barnet was born. Both from New England, the poet and the artist found inspiration for much of their work in their region's geography, climate, and culture. Yet both rejected provincialism and forged their own paths--Dickinson (1830-1886) changed the face of poetry with inventive phrasing, punctuation, rhyme schemes, and subject matter and was viewed by many of her neighbors and contemporaries as an eccentric. Barnet (b. 1911)--who moved to New York City in the middle of the Depression--in each decade of his long career has maintained a vibrant intellectual and artistic life, bringing ever-expanding vision and heart to his work. He is one of America's most important contemporary artists. Barnet's respect and love for Dickinson's poetry sing from the drawings reproduced in this book. The World in a Frame presents forty-six poems by Emily Dickinson and twenty-four drawings by Will Barnet. An introduction by critic, essayist, and author Christopher Benfey offers a fascinating glimpse of Dickinson's life and personality while exploring the juxtaposition of her work with Barnet's art. Drawings by Will Barnet, poems by Emily Dickinson, and introduction by Christopher Benfey.

A collection of sonnets by the American Book Award-winning poet ponders the nature of belongings as possessions, as the reflections of a life, and as the places where life takes place in a volume that also features the writer's memories of a childhood home, her mourning for her mother, and more.

An anthology of nineteenth-century American women's poetry includes the humorous parodies of Mary Weston Fordham and the abolitionist poems of Frances Harper.

"[Walker’s] well-focused, clearly written essays demonstrate the conformity and the challenges to conventional expectations defining ‘women poets.’ Walker’s work makes a significant contribution to an often neglected area of American literary history." —Library Journal "Based on close reading and explication of the texts, Walker brings fresh insights to each poet." —Choice "... Walker has devised an original analysis that puts a new spin on the works and lives of these poets." —New Directions for Women Concentrating on Amy Lowell, Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie, H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Louise Bogan, Walker analyzes the highly stylized self-images—from Lowell's androgyne to Millay's body-conscious romantic—projected by these women who attempted to renegotiate the terms upon which they could function successfully as poets.