Beginning and Ending with Emily: Ghazals and Golden Shovels - by Scott Wiggerman

Poet Scott Wiggerman plays with two poetic forms—ghazals and golden shovels—and draws inspiration from Emily Dickinson poems to create fresh works entirely his own.

Praise for Beginning and Ending with Emily:

“The book feels like a treasure hunt—plunging from Dickinson’s familiar lines into rhythms and questions edged by the chosen form. The poems are taut, personal investigations into new understandings of love.”
—Lauren Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate, 2022-2025

“What is it not just to read a poet’s work but to take them in so deeply that their being becomes a part of yours? Scott Wiggerman’s Beginning and Ending with Emily is, by far, the best example I’ve found of such a deep and abiding study, making together with Emily Dickinson a great quilt crafted in the sleepless hours of the night. As such, each of his poems backstitch into hers, taking the scraps of the heart to form a book wild but ordered, held fast by the constraint for which she is known but following the pull of a queer golden thread luminous and striking. The result is not just conversation but co-creation, an achievement of measure, candor, and above all, love—or, as he writes, ‘Emily’s now me, and I’m now her: so begins the soul.’”
—Nickole Brown, author of Donkey Elegies

“We need this book right now, for reference and delight.  And to soothe our sore and broken selves.”
—Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems