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The romantic and often romantically charged writings, censored or misinterpreted in earlier collections, will surprise many readers. "In writing filled with warmth, humor, playfulness, and joy, Emily Dickinson shows her profound attachment to Susan as a friend and an object of literary inspiration. All the better to appreciate, in a fresh and overdue context, that poetic voice we have come to know — iridescent, puzzling, explosive." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Most important, unlike previous editors who altered line breaks to fit their sense of what is poetry or prose, Hart and Smith offer faithful reproductions of the letters' genre-defying form as the words unravel spectacularly down the original page. With spare commentary, Smith and Hart wisely let these letters speak for themselves. In compiling Open Me Carefully (which includes more than 20 poems and one letter not previously connected with Susan), they aim to show that the women enjoyed a long, close relationship, one whose workaday exchange of 'letter-poems' (Susan's term) contributed to 'the texture of their daily life.' Even more urgent, however, is their intent to champion Susan as Dickinson's 'primary reader' — the person they believe exerted the most significant, sustaining influence on Dickinson's poetic and erotic sensibility….

After an examination of these cryptic messages, Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith have emerged up in arms for Susan.

Dickinson's punctuation and capitalization, not orthodox by Victorian standards and called "spasmodic" by her critics, give greater emphasis to her meanings."Emily Dickinson's surviving letters to Susan, which began ardently a few years before Susan's marriage and continued almost until the poet's death in 1886, outnumber her letters to anyone else. Full of highly charged metaphors, her free verse and choice of words are best understood when read aloud. Dickinson's poetry engages the reader and requires his or her participation. She never married and began to withdraw from society, eventually becoming a recluse. Except for a year spent at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Dickinson spent her entire life in the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Today she is considered one of the best poets of the English language.

Critics have agreed that Dickinson's poetry was well ahead of its time. After her death, Dickinson's sister Lavinia found over 1,700 poems Emily had written and stashed away in a drawer - the accumulation of a life's obsession with words. The few poems published in her lifetime were not received with any great fanfare. Although one of America's most acclaimed poets, the bulk of her work was not published until well after her death on May 15, 1886.

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10, 1830.