Category: Emily Dickinson

After the Fair

7/19/2021

In a letter from Emily Dickinson to Mrs. J. G. Holland in May 1866, Emily wrote, "Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus passed the house - still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out." The complete letter is HERE.

How cool is that? To have a circus parade by just outside your bedroom window!

Dickinson's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi wrote about the incident in her 1936 book "The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson." See below -- and also click HERE.

I did not see a circus parade this summer; however I did stumble upon two vacant carnivals -- and I too was thrilled by their wild vagrancy and pathos (though there were no signs of "utter sophistication").

Above left, center and right: An abandoned carnival in Kilmarnock, Virginia. Below left, center and right: An abandoned carnival in Wachapreague on Virginia's Eastern Shore (part of the DelMarVa Peninsula).

Below: A slide show with additional pictures from both abandoned carnivals. NOTE: Slide shows don't always work on Android devices, so the pics are best viewed on a laptop, iPad or iPhone.

A Visit to the Houghton Library -- Part 2

5/18/2021

I'm late getting this post up for a variety of reasons. One of them has to do with some issues I was having with my laptop back in April and early May -- but that problem has been solved for now. Anyway, in April the Houghton Library sponsored a virtual tour of their Emily Dickinson room/collection for National Poetry Month, and I attended the event sans laptop. I was able to participate by using an iPad, and I took pics of the iPad screen with my cell phone -- soooo, the pics are below with a few comments.

And just FYI: Part 1 of this plog (poetry blog) post is HERE -- and it tells the story of my first (and actual) visit to the Houghton -- back in 2013 -- when I was able to see the Dickinson room in person!

Below are the pics and comments from 2021's virtual tour:

The host, live from the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, opened with this poem by Emily:

A precious – mouldering pleasure – 'tis –
To meet an Antique Book –
In just the Dress his Century wore –
A privilege – I think –

His venerable Hand to take –
And warming in our own –
A passage back – or two – to make –
To Times when he – was young –

His quaint opinions – to inspect –
His thought to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind –
The Literature of Man –

What interested Scholars – most –
What Competitions ran –
When Plato – was a Certainty –
And Sophocles – a Man –

When Sappho – was a living Girl –
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante – deified –
Facts Centuries before

He traverses – familiar –
As One should come to Town –
And tell you all your Dreams – were true –
He lived – where Dreams were born –

His presence is Enchantment –
You beg him not to go –
Old Volume shake their Vellum Heads
And tantalize – just so –

Following the poem, Leslie Morris, the Gore Vidal Curator at the Houghton Library, explained how much of Dickinson's belongings and work ended up at Harvard.

SPOILER ALERT: The gift came from 1901 Harvard graduate Gilbert Holland Montague, a New York lawyer and bibliophile. Read about it in an article from 1950 in the Harvard Crimson HERE.

Montague donated everything to the Houghton Library at Harvard during his 50th reunion, and the library agreed to establish a Dickinson memorial room -- shown in the pics at the left.

Ms. Morris pointed out that in the painting of the Dickinson children (at the right), the painter depicted with a book and a flower -- two of the things she loved.

Left: The Dickinson memorial room includes the chest of drawers where Lavinia discovered many of Emily's poems.

Ms. Morris noted that the original copies of Dickinson's poems is "now much more securely stored."

Below left and right: The Dickinson family's piano, and some of Emily's music.

At the right: Emily Dickinson's writing desk. "I was struck by how small it is," said Morris.

Below left and right: Some of Emily's personal belongings. Emily wore the cape on the night she met Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Below left and right: Pages from one of Dickinson's fascicles. Harvard has 40 of the poet's surviving fascicles (I believe she said that Amherst College has two of fascicles as well). Ms. Morris noted that the blue grease pencil mark was made by none other than Mabel Loomis Todd.

Below left and right: A fascicle page with a poem written by Emily -- with possible alternate word choices included at the bottom of the page.

At the right: A poem Emily sent to Elizabeth Holland with a flower. It is thought that the tape was added to the page later by Alfred Hampson, Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s friend and literary assistant.

At the left: Besides including flowers with her poems, Dickinson also cut pictures out of her father's books. This example shows pics she extracted from Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop.

Below left: The Houghton is currently digitizing all 600-plus books from the Dickinson family library. Ms. Morris noted that "we're half-way there." Below right: A page of Emily's pressed flowers.

Ms. Morris reported that Dickinson had cut the name "Timothy" out of a page from the Bible her father gave to her as a gift. "We're not sure why -- or when and how she used it," said Morris.

ALSO: The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst has a the complete tour available on their site, HERE.

A Visit to the Houghton Library -- Part 1

4/19/2021

I attended a virtual tour of the Houghton Library's Emily Dickinson Room/Collection the other night, and that will be the subject of "A Visit to the Houghton Library -- Part 2." I'll post info and pics about that virtual tour soon.

First, though, I thought I would share a funny story about my first (and real) visit to the Dickinson Room back in 2013.

During the summer of that year, my wife and I visited New England, and we spent time in Boston, Amherst (my first visit to Dickinson's Homestead), and the coastline of New Hampshire and Maine. Information about that trip is included in this travelogue, HERE.

We happened to have time during a weekday -- a Tuesday I think -- to take a tour of Harvard, and following that tour I ventured into the Houghton Library. I inquired about the Dickinson collection at the security desk, but the guard told me that the public was only allowed in to see it during specific times (I think it was something like a Friday at 2 p.m.).

I was about to walk away, but I pulled out one of my business cards and handed it to the guard. I explained that I had written a book about Dickinson and asked if they would be willing to bend the rules a bit since it was my one and only time there.

The guard inspected the card and then picked up the telephone to call someone locked away in a staff-only section of the library.

Soon, a woman came out. The guard explained my plight, showed her my card, and she mulled over my request for a bit.

"Sure," she said, "I can show you the room -- but come back at about 2:00 p.m." It was about 10:30 a.m. at the time She then added something like, "I can show you the room at 2:00 -- but only for a few minutes."

I thanked her profusely, and then ran off with my wife to find a restaurant for an early lunch. I figured that we could eat and chat until about 1:30 p.m. or so, and then we'd head back to the Houghton.

While we were eating, I had a terrible thought -- WHAT IF between now and 2:00 p.m. that very librarian were to check out my website dedicated to Emmett Lee Dickinson? After all, the web address was printed on my business card. What if she visited my site and deemed the humor to be too boorish and not deserving of a private tour of the Dickinson room? What if I return to the Houghton, and the woman were to throw me out on my ear for misconduct unbecoming of a true Dickinson fan?

I believe I actually broke out into a sweat and my heart started racing.

After we ate lunch and paid the check, we headed back over to the Houghton. I was a nervous wreck. What sort of reception would I receive?

Well, all the worry was for naught. The staff member greeted me in the lobby and took my wife and I up to the Dickinson for a private showing, and the woman was very gracious. Hee hee -- I don't think she had a chance to look at my site! LOL.

I did send her complimentary copies of my books though, to thank her -- it was very considerate on her part (and the guard too) to accommodate us! The tour was certainly a highlight of our trip!

Opposites Attract?

2/4/2021

Back in December, I tweeted about Emily Dickinson's use of the words "calm" and "wild" in her poems.

Well, true to her "Wild Nights! Wild Nights!" Ms. Dickinson did, in fact, use the word "wild" in more poems than she wrote about the "calm." As a matter of fact, she used the term "wild" in 11 poems, while she only used "calm" (or some form of it, like "calmness") in 6 poems.

Okay, so what about other opposites?

Was Dickinson more "hot" than "cold"? Was she more "day" than "night"? And what about "war" and "peace"?

I've looked into other sets of opposites below.

Let me know (via Twitter: @The_Dickinson) if you'd like to know about any other opposites.

Below: In the tables below the charts, the number equals the number of poems in which that term appears.

TRUE: 28

FALSE: 0

SWEET: 96

SOUR: 0

NIGHT: 127

DAY: 234

HOT: 4

COLD: 23

BLACK: 6

WHITE: 25

LOVE: 104

HATE: 9

WAR: 5

PEACE: 25

HAPPY: 25

SAD: 4

ODD: 11

EVEN: 76

These Are Their Letters To The World

1/16/2021

Did you happen to see the Washington Post today?

There in the midst of all the horrific news of our miscreant so-called "president" -- the one who staged a coup to overthrow our government -- there was quite a pleasant surprise.

There on page A19 -- almost hidden in plain sight -- was a tribute to Emmett Lee Dickinson's third cousin, Emily Dickinson.

The headline for a letter centered at the top of the page about Apple TV's "Dickinson" declared "Wild Nights! Wild Nights!"

The caption under the photograph said, "Items left on the desk of the late poet Claudia Emerson, including a book of poems by Emily Dickinson, in Richmond in 2015."

Upon closer inspection, though, a wonderful surprise comes into view: Every letter on the page is introduced by a line from Dickinson's poetry.

First Things First

1/2/2021

I have a friend who used to say that his birthday was on the one day of the year that no on wanted to celebrate -- January 2nd.

Of course, almost everyone celebrates on December 31st for New Year's Eve, and those who can't make it to midnight celebrate on the First of January, New Year's Day.

And then the Second rolls around -- and no one wants to party!

Well, I don't know if that is true or not, but if your birthday happens to be on January 2nd, then HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

Oh, and since today is the second, I also looked into ordinal numbers used in the poetry of Emily Dickinson poetry, and I found five: first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. I didn't find a "sixth" of anything higher.

Interestingly, I found one poem that used all five of the numbers, "Finding is the first act":

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"

Fourth, no Discovery --
Fifth, no Crew --
Finally, no Golden Fleece --
Jason -- sham -- too.

Here are the statistics related to Dickinson's use of ordinal numbers in her poetry:

Number / # of Poems in which the Number Appears:

First: 89

Second: 32

Third: 3

Fourth: 1

Firth: 1

Time and Time Again

12/31/2020

There are only a few hours left of 2020. Tomorrow is the dawn of a new year -- and as @Reen_Machine proclaimed on Twitter, "Thank God everything will be different tomorrow." Hmm. In her other tweet below, methinks @Reen_Machine was being a bit facetious (in yet another tweet, she declared, "2020 went exactly as planned. I gained 500 pounds and got a customer support job!!!!!!" Note the profusion of exclamation points -- a sure sign of waggish mockery).

Anyway, tonight at midnight, we shall all hold a coin, shout "Happy New Year," and sing "Auld Lang Syne." Tomorrow, we'll consume pork and black eyed peas, and everything will be different.

Well, maybe not.

Remember when news surfaced that an ancient Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world in 2012? Some now think there was a discrepancy in the calendar, and the Mayan's got the number wrong. Did they really mean 2021?

I suppose we'll know more at midnight, right?

With the few hours left in 2020, and the onset of 2021 at midnight, I wondered what times of day might be included in the poems of Emily Dickinson. The information is below.

Below: Emily Dickinson in her gold Rolex watch, a gift from her parents.

Emily Dickinson used the term “o’clock” with no specified time in the poem “We pay to heaven.” In that poem, she said, “Relate – when Neighbors die -- / At what o’clock to Heaven – they fled.”

In other poems, she did mention the following specific times, once each: one o’clock, two o’clock, half-past three, four o’clock, half-past four, five o’clock, six o’clock and half-past seven.

Below are the specific times and the poems they appear in:

TIME:

POEM:

LINE:

1:00

The Clock strikes one that just struck two

The Clock strikes one that just struck two

2:00

The Clock strikes one that just struck two

The Clock strikes one that just struck two

3:30

At Half-past Three, a single bird

At Half-past Three, a single bird

4:00

The birds begun at four o’clock

The birds begun at four o’clock

4:30

At Half-past Three, a single bird

At Half past Four, experiment

5:00

The Day came slow – till Five o’clock

The Day came slow – till Five o’clock

6:00

I tie my Hat – I crease my Shawl –

The time ’twill be till six o’clock –

7:30

At Half-past Three, a single bird

At Half-past seven, element

Dickinson also used the words "noon" in 74 poems and "midnight" in 18 poems.

Below: Time / # of Poems in which the time is mentioned:

Noon: 74
1:00: 1
2:00: 1
3:30: 1
4:00: 1
4:30: 1
5:00: 1
6:00: 1
7:30: 1
Midnight: 18

For more information on other times of day mentioned in poems by Dickinson, click HERE.

For other statistics related to word choice in Dickinson's poems, click HERE.

Happy New Year, one and all! See you in 2021.

Christmas Presence

12/23/2020

Did Emily Dickinson ever mention Santa Claus in any of her poems?

Indeed she did.

In her poem "'Twas just this time, last year, I died," the following stanza appears:

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me –

Did Dickinson use other Christmas-y words in her poems? Again -- indeed she did.

Below: The following Christmas-related words appear in various poems written by Emily Dickinson:

Below: Christmas-related terms used by Dickinson -- followed by the number of poems in which the word appears;

Elf: 1
Presents: 1
Reindeer: 1
Santa Claus : 1
Sleigh: 1
Decorate: 2
Elves: 2
Jolly: 2

Carol: 3
Christmas: 3
Bethlehem: 4
Stockings: 5
Candles: 6
Chimney: 6
Gift: 8
Savior: 8

Merry: 10
Jesus: 16
Peace: 25
Angel: 31
Bell/Bells: 38
Joy: 42
Snow: 57
Star: 63

Just after I posted the chart and table above, I checked on two other Christmas-related words: "'Twas" (as in "'Twas the night before Christmas") and "Hark" (as in "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"):

Hark: 2
'Twas: 90

Oh, and I also checked on the following:

Frankincense: 0
Myrrh: 1
Gold: 36

Merry Christmas to one and all. And in the words of Tiny Tim, "Tiptoe through the tulips!"

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON STATISTICS OF WORD USE IN THE POETRY OF DICKINSON, CLICK HERE.

In The Zooms Where It Happened

12/16/2020

Last week, on 12/10, I participated in three events in honor of Emily Dickinson's 190th birthday. One was at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, PA, one took place at the Houghton Library at Harvard, in Boston, MA, and one was sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Of course, due to the need for social distancing brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, all three events were provided online, and I viewed all three from home.

Below left: A greeting from Emily Dickinson's bedroom from the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst. Alas, I do not have the host's name, but she said that the event broke the museum's record for geographic representation at one of their online programs with 35 different countries represented at this birthday celebration.

Below middle: I didn't have any of Dickinson's Black Cake handy, so I enjoyed a freshly baked pretzel while viewing the program from the Houghton Library.

Below right: Poet Dorianne Laux read her own poetry and selected poems by Emily Dickinson at the event sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Left: The celebration in Amherst opened with a performance by an Italian band called "Anais." They sang their original song based on Emily Dickinson's poem, "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"

The theme of the event was "Who is your Emily Dickinson," and the program included various videos from Dickinson aficionados who spoke about their own personal connections to the poet and her poetry. Some of the speakers recited their favorite poems by Dickinson.

Below: The program included a flight over Amherst for an aerial view of the city, the Emily Dickinson Museum, and other sites around the town. (One suggestion if they ever do this again: Please have someone narrate the flight so that viewers know what they are looking at. Fortunately, I've been to Amherst a few times, so I had a pretty good idea as to what I was seeing.)

Left: Pilot Jim Arnold
Right: The rolling hills near Amherst.
Below left: An aerial shot of Amherst.
Below center: Dickinson's Homestead (on the right) and the Evergreens (on the left).
Below right: West Cemetery, burial site of Emily Dickinson.

The program also included...

* Instructions to craft a collage of a color-by-number portrait of Dickinson.
* Two special guests from Apple TV's "Dickinson," the show's creator, Alena Smith, and Ella Hunt, who portrays Susan Gilbert, who would become Dickinson's sister-in-law.
* A discussion of Dickinson's quite remarkable recipe for Black Cake (the ingredients include 19 eggs and -- if I heard correctly -- five pounds of raisins).

Some of the favorite poems recited by the fans of Dickinson:

* "Hope" is the thing with feathers

* I died for Beauty -- but was scarce

* How happy is the little stone

* This is my letter to the World (sung to the tune of Amazing Grace by a 7th grade class in New Hampshire)

At the right: Coincidentally, the program ended with Efrat Ben Zur's interpretation of "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" -- the same poem that inspired the group that opened the program.

"Team Cake" from Houghton Library (& other esteemed institutions) hosted an event at 3:00 p.m. (Eastern), and the program included quiet an impressive assembly of authors, poets, professors, and more.

They also spoke with Alena Smith, creator of Apple TV's "Dickinson," and she shared a sneak peek of a scene from Season 2.

Below: The sneak peek into Season 2 of Apple TV's "Dickinson" starred Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson as she prepared her 20-pound Black Cake for a baking contest to give the Amherst College Cattle Show a "generously spiced ass kicking" (and then, quipped Alena Smith, "hijinks ensued").

The program's readers and guests included food historian Laura Shapiro, author of What She Ate; Abigail Weil, food writer -- and much more; Heather Cole, curator of rare, unique, and special materials at the Brown University Library; NPR's Nikki Silva, co-creator of "The Kitchen Sisters"; Vanessa Braganza from the Harvard English Department; Emilie Hardman, Head of Distinctive Collections for MIT Libraries; Shayla Lawson, Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College; Rachel Syme, contributing author to "The New Yorker"; Margaret Rhee, author of a collection of poems called Love Robot; Ann Kjellberg, founding editor of Book Post; Allison Devers, author and dealer in rare books; author and poet Tracie Morris; and "Poet; Activist; Change-Maker," Amanda Gorman.

The panel shared favorite poems of Dickinson's, provided some history of food from Mount Holyoke College, discussed accounts of Emily Dickinson's chores at home ("Emily did the butterfly duties of the house, and her sister Lavinia did the moth part"), and provided readings from the letters of Emily Dickinson, and more.

The evening program sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library began with a tour of Emily Dickinson's bedroom provided by Jane Wald, the Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA.

The main feature of the Folger's program was poetry readings by poet Dorianne Laux, who intermingled poems of her own with poems by Emily Dickinson.

Many of Laux's poems were inspired by anecdotes from Dickinson's life and/or by many of her the poet's personal objects -- her basket (the very one she would fill with goodies and lower from her bedroom window to the excited children waiting below), her tea cup ("Bring me the sunset in a cup"), a clock, and more. In one of her poems, Laux imagined speaking to the poet once she had died, and within her poem, Laux embedded all of the words from Dickinson's "Like Brooms of steel" (below on the left).

Having seen the tour of Dickinson's room provided by Jane Wald, Laux said she was feeling inspired to write poems based on some of the other objects -- Dickinson's hurricane lamp, her sleigh bed, and of course, her white dress.

"The objects come alive to me," said Laux, "and the more you get into them, the more they speak to you personally. It's as if Emily Dickinson is speaking to me, directly to me, through the years."

"One day..." she added, "One day I'm going to write about that dress."

By Emily Dickinson:

Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street –
The House was hooked
The Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of Heat –
Where rode the Bird
The Silence tied
His ample – plodding Steed
The Apple in the Cellar snug
Was all the one that played.

Sense of Direction

12/15/2020

It feels shorter than a day since Emily Dickinson boarded a carriage and first surmised the horses' heads were toward eternity -- but what direction is "eternity"? Is it north or south? East or west?

I suspect it's toward the west, since that's where the sun sets -- but who really knows. Dickinson never said.

Anyway, speaking of directions and the the poetry of Emily Dickinson, which direction do you think Dickinson wrote about the most? North, south, east or west?

I checked this out at the online Emily Dickinson Archive, and the results are below.

Dickinson used the word "compass" in 4 poems, but in only one did she mean a "compass," an instrument to locate a direction. Three times she used the word as some form of the verb "to compass," to go around in a circular course. Dickinson also used the word "direction" once -- but she did use north, south, east and west multiple times.

North: 14

South: 16

West: 28

East: 30

Hmm. Maybe that carriage was heading east after all.