Sherry, Sherry Baby (Can You Come Out Tonight?)

I cannot tell you how tiring it is to hear from people, “You look like George Clooney.”

No, I don’t look like George Clooney.  George Clooney looks like me.

Lol – all kidding aside, if someone would say, “describe what you look like,” I’d say something quotidian like “five-feet-eleven, skinny-ish, thin face, white hair, blue eyes.”  However, when Emily Dickinson described herself in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she said nothing so practical and prosaic.
Here’s how Dickinson described herself:

“I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur- and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves-”

I love that last image – that her eyes are not just like “the Sherry,” but like “the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves.”
Hmm…that made me wonder if Dickinson ever used the word “sherry” in any of her poems.

Yep, she sure did.  She used the word “sherry” in “Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower.”

Did she ever use any other liquors and libations?

Well, she never used “beer,” “brandy,” “claret,” “whiskey,” “rye” or “scotch.”

She did use “ale” in one poem, “We – Bee and I – live by the quaffing,” and “rum” in one poem, “The popular heart is a cannon first.”
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“Draughts” appears in three poems, the word “liquor” shows up in six different poems – the most famous being “I taste a liquor never brewed” – and the word “wine” – a drum roll, please – appears in 17 poems.

By the way, the word “drunkard” is used in two poems, “A Drunkard cannot meet a cork” and “The rose did caper on her cheek.”