In some of my recent posts, I have discussed MacGregor Jenkins’ book “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.”
As you can tell from the title, Jenkins was a neighbor of the Dickinson family, and he was a childhood friend of Dickinson’s niece Martha “Maddie” Dickinson. The two of them and other friends spent much time in the orbit of “Miss Emily,” and in 1930, Jenkins wrote an biography of the poet “ to dispel, if possible, some of this cloud of fable and to make Miss Emily a more human and more understandable person.”
The book is filled with wonderful descriptions of Dickinson and her views on family, friends, children, nature, religion, life and general and more!
Take a look at the passage below on Dickinson’s perspective on day-to-day life. It includes the line, “She was fond of what Lowell called ‘the robin-haunted dusk’ and every hour had its message.”
As you can tell from the title, Jenkins was a neighbor of the Dickinson family, and he was a childhood friend of Dickinson’s niece Martha “Maddie” Dickinson. The two of them and other friends spent much time in the orbit of “Miss Emily,” and in 1930, Jenkins wrote an biography of the poet “ to dispel, if possible, some of this cloud of fable and to make Miss Emily a more human and more understandable person.”
The book is filled with wonderful descriptions of Dickinson and her views on family, friends, children, nature, religion, life and general and more!
Take a look at the passage below on Dickinson’s perspective on day-to-day life. It includes the line, “She was fond of what Lowell called ‘the robin-haunted dusk’ and every hour had its message.”
That “robin-haunted dusk” comes from the poem “The Long Days” by William Dean Howells. The poem was published in an 1874 edition of “The Atlantic” (Dickinson would have been 44 at the time).
I love Jenkin’s description of Dickinson’s take on life – from “the glory of the morning to the pensive beauty of the evening” – so perhaps in the near future I’ll post some of my favorite poems which depict the glorious hours of the day!
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