Changing rapture

"Aliki Barnstone challenges the common assumption that Emily Dickinson's poetry did not change and evolve over the course of her career as a poet. She argues that this notion of her lack of development, while it contributes to the established myth of the isolated and timeless Dickinson, has tended to diminish our appreciation of her as a poet and thinker whose work is both an innovative artistic achievement and a cultural commentary. Throughout the book, Barnstone contextualizes Dickinson's evolving spiritual and poetic development within nineteenth-century American culture."--BOOK JACKET.