Books in the Warbler Press Contemplations series

Emily Dickinson's poems are characterized by an unmatched emotional and intellectual intensity that is cast into direct and accessible language of unusual brevity and grace. Some of her poems run for only a few lines but they survey the entire cosmos of human experience, including life and death, solitude and society, morality and nature. Many of her 1,775 poems are devoted to love, which Dickinson expressed from the position of the lover, the beloved, and the poet who marvels how love transports and transforms us. This selection gathers Dickinson's thrillingly unique poetry about the central animating experience of our lives.

When in love, our heart overflows. Whether love is requited or remains a hope and dream, love compels us to express ourselves. This original collection, culled from William Shakespeare's works, testifies to the essential link between love and language, between the experience of falling in love and the urge to express this unique feeling with our beloved and the world. Shakespeare's inventiveness and facility with words is such that even brief lines seem to contain whole galaxies of meaning. This allows us to read the brilliant passages gathered in this book without needing the whole context-the way we can marvel at a gem mined from a vast mountain without accounting for all that compressed it into a spark of beauty. Since their first publication more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare's lines describe the pangs, pains, and pleasure of love like no other writer before or after him.