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Although Emily Dickinson is sometimes seen as a religious skeptic, she never gave up on God, struggling with issues of faith and doubt throughout her life. Many of her poems depict such struggles, sometimes with humor and sometimes with despair. Reading and reflecting on these poems can be a powerful way to listen to and experience God through the arts.
Mending a Tattered Faith presents, first, an accessible introduction to the mysteries of Dickinson's life and poetry, considering her relationships to her family and the church, the significant poetic strategies she employed, and the dramatic family struggle over publishing her poetry that began soon after her death. It then offers twenty-nine carefully selected poems by Dickinson, each with an accompanying meditation. By helping readers unpack Dickinson's intense but brief poems, supplying absorbing historical background and information, and relating some personal stories and reflections, this book encourages readers to embark upon their own meditative journey with Dickinson, whose engaging struggles with faith and doubt can help illuminate our own spiritual questions, sorrows, and joys.
About the author
Susan VanZanten is Professor of English at Seattle Pacific University. She is the author of Truth and Reconciliation: The Confessional Mode in South African Literature (2002), the editor of Postcolonial Literature and the Biblical Call to Justice (1994), and co-author (with Roger Lundin) of Literature through the Eyes of Faith (1989).
