Silence Fell

A serious illness at the age of six left Josephine Dickinson deaf overnight. She nonetheless built an astounding career as a musician, composer, and teacher while also writing poetry filled with sound and rhythm. During a reading tour in England, Galway Kinnell was given two of Dickinson's books. Her poems made such an impression on him that he passed the books on to his publisher. Silence Fell, Dickinson's American debut, draws from her previous collections. The poems are set on a sheep farm in the northern mountains of England and tell the story -- in the form of a modern shepherd's calendar -- of her marriage to a Cumbrian sheep farmer, a man more than twice her age, and their life together, until his death in 2004. As the poet Michael Donaghy wrote, "Hers is a vision edged with mystery and rendered with arresting, occasionally breathtaking craft. She bears, with no small authority, an air of independence reminiscent of Emily Dickinson."