From our entertainment editor Qwerty Lee Dickinson: It's Groundhog Day -- again! Did you know that Groundhog Day was established by Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request). We wrote about the holiday's history HERE and HERE. But did you know that there's more to the Dickinson-Groundhog Day connection? The movie "Groundhog Day," for example, was based on a poem by Emmett Lee Dickinson. Bill Murray, who had attended the Emmett Lee Dickinson School for Boys in Wilmette, Illinois, fell in love with Dickinson's poetry when he was in high school. Then, in the early-1990s when he was trying to find a movie project to save his career, Murray remembered Dickinson's poem "That it will always come again" (below on the left). He showed the poem to his good friend Harold Ramis, and it inspired the two to write their mega-hit "Groundhog Day." The poem also inspired Dickinson's third cousin Emily to pen her poem, "That it will never come again" (below on the right). |
By Emmett Lee Dickinson: That it will always come again Is what makes life so blah. Reliving what we’ve just relived Does surely make us yawn. That if I work, then home to rest A dull sedative state – That instigates an appetite Precisely commonplace. | By Emily Dickinson: That it will never come again Is what makes life so sweet. Believing what we don't believe Does not exhilarate. That if it be, it be at best An ablative estate -- This instigates an appetite Precisely opposite. |