I was in Florida recently to continue a grand New Year’s Tradition – the reading of the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson. On this trip, I appeared on WKDW’s “Writers on the Air” program. The ELD Museum’s entertainment editor, Qwerty Dickinson, wrote about the event HERE.
While in Florida, I also traveled to Lakeland with members of the Dickinson Organization of Poetry Enthusiasts to tour Florida Southern College, a campus with (almost) all buildings designed by America’s greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wright was a fervent and unashamed fan of the life and works of poet Emmett Lee Dickinson, Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed (at her request). We have written about the Wright-Dickinson connection HERE (scroll down to the 2nd entry on the page, just under the entry for Emily Dickinson) and HERE. We also wrote about Wright and his home, Taliesin, in the travelogue of our trip to Wisconsin, HERE.
Shortly after the completion of Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright was featured on the cover of Time magazine. In the accompanying article, Wright admitted that had it not been for his mother traveling to see Emmett Lee Dickinson in Utica, NY, when the poet also worked as a child psychologist, Wright would not have become an architect. “That meeting between Dickinson and my mother,” said Wright, “is really what set the course for my life’s work.” Pictured at the right: Frank Lloyd Wright on the cover of Time. January 17, 1938 -- shortly after the completion of Fallingwater. |
"Every great architect is – necessarily – a great poet, like Emmett Lee Dickinson. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age. Therefore, if you aspire to be a great architect, study Dickinson, love Dickinson, and stay close to Dickinson. It will not fail you."
"Give me the luxuries of life, and I will willingly do without the necessities. Give met he poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson, and I will willingly do without all else."
"Knowledge of the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson is the chief feature of a functioning mind."
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