I EXPRESS my appreciation to Charlene Avallone for helping
me to think through and articulate my ideas. Her encouragement and
incisive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript I could not
have done without. My thanks also go to Thomas Werge, Erskine
Peters, and James Dougherty for their comments on the manuscript.

Individuals at my present institution deserve much of my gratitude
as well. First, a research grant from Northwestern College ( Iowa)
enabled me to complete the final version of the manuscript, as did the
special-emphasis contract on research that the college was able to offer
me. To Robert Zwier and James Bultman, I am grateful for North-
western's show of support and commitment to scholarship. I am also
indebted to my colleagues Joel Westerholm and Lee Cerling for read-
ing and commenting on portions of the manuscript. Thanks also go to
Richard Reitsma, reference librarian, who always knows where to find
research materials, and to Michael Cole, a Kent State University li-
brarian who helped me to track down numerous books and sermon
manuscripts in the early stages of my research. Several student re-
search assistants helped on the manuscript in its various stages: Carla
Carlson Hibma, Cory Mattson, Stephanie Grandia, Jill Haarsma,
Kellie Gregg, and, most of all, the ever-faithful Scott Isebrand.

Versions of two chapters of this book were published in scholarly
journals: Chapter 3, as "Emily Dickinson, Homiletics, and Prophetic
Power," in The Emily Dickinson Journal 1, 2, ( 1992); and Chapter 6,
as "Power through Prophecy: Emily Dickinson and the Scriptural
Prophetic Tradition," in Studies in Puritan American Spirituality 4
(Winter 1994): 225-51. Both are used by permission. I am grateful for
permission granted by the Harvard University Press to reprint Dick-
inson's poems from Thomas H. Johnson, The Poems of Emily Dickin-
son ( Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963), as well as portions of Dickin-
son's letters from Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward, eds., The
Letters of Emily Dickinson ( Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965). Paul
Wright at the University of Masschusetts Press deserves my thanks for
his helpful comments and his persistence in seeing this book through.
I am also grateful for the work of Pam Wilkinson and the staff in the
Amherst office of the University of Massachusetts Press.

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