“A Flower or a Book” is an anthology of short poems by Emily Dickinson that have been translated into Italian by Roberto Malini. Dickenson’s desire to become a poet was born from her wish to better man’s essence and to surpass the confines of the divine in her search for a more perfect purity. It is no coincidence that Emily compared her art to Jacob’s battle with the angel, which resulted in her spending most of her life in the house where she was born, leaving only for short visits with relatives. Like an angel, she dressed all in white, and found the infinite in the cycles of nature and in the small moments of daily life, even though she lived in a society that was upended by cataclysmic events like the American Civil War. These short poems, written alone in her room, are indicative of her search to understand life’s meaning through her own imagination. Upon Emily’s death at the age of 56, her sister found a drawer containing her life’s work: 1,775 poems written on pieces of paper that had been sewed together with a needle and thread.
