A Door Ajar

Critics have said that Emily Dickinson has no heirs, that her poetry represents the zenith the experimental method she developed in the mid-nineteenth century. Thomas Gardner disagrees. In this original study, he takes up conversation with four contemporary writers in whose work he finds an extension or expansion of Dickinson's literary legacy. The book, which includes interviews with Marilynne Robinson, Charles Wright, Susan Howe, and Jorie Graham, is also an intimate look at writers at work and an exploration of the twin forces of influence and originality that animate literary writing.