and asking, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?" (Letter 260) He was not – his reply included gentle "surgery" (that is, criticism) of Dickinson's raw, odd verse, questions about Dickinson's personal and literary background, and a request for more poems. Higginson's next reply contained high praise, causing Dickinson to reply that it "gave no drunkenness" only because she had "tasted rum before"; she still, though, had "few pleasures so deep as your opinion, and if I tried to thank you, my tears would block my tongue" (Letter 265). In the same letter, Higginson warned her against publishing her poetry because of its unconventional form and style. Gradually, Higginson became Dickinson's mentor and "preceptor," and he visited her twice, in 1870 and 1873, at her home in Amherst. Higginson never felt that he fully understood Dickinson. "The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me," he wrote, "and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy." ("Emily Dickinson's Letters," Atlantic Monthly, October 1891) After Dickinson's death, Higginson collaborated with Mabel Loomis Todd in publishing volumes of her poetry – heavily edited in favor of conventional punctuation, diction, and rhyme. In White Heat (Knopf, 2008), an account of Higginson's friendship with Dickinson, author Brenda Wineapple credits Higginson with more editorial sensitivity than literary historians have previously noted. Higginson's prominence within intellectual circles helped to promote Dickinson's poetry, which remained strange and startling even in its altered form. Selected list of works His works included: "A Ride Through Kanzas" (1856) "Going to Mount Katahdin", Putnam's Monthly (September 1856), vol. VIII, pp. 242-256. "The Story of Denmark Vesey," The Atlantic Monthly (June 1861) Denmark Vesey was a free Black pastor who was hanged in 1822 after being convicted of planning a major slave revolt that was discovered before it could be realized. Outdoor Papers (1863) The Works of Epictetus (1866), a translation based on that by Elizabeth Carter Eminent Women of the Age; Being Narratives of the Lives and Deeds of the Most Prominent Women of the Present Generation (1868) (Twelve biographies of women, of which Higginson wrote two: Lydia Maria Child and Margaret Fuller Ossoli) Malbone: an Oldport Romance (1869) Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870) Atlantic Essays (1871) Oldport Days (1873) A Book of American Explorers (1877) Common Sense About Women (1881) Margaret Fuller Ossoli (in American