Emily Dickinson came into this world on December 12, in 1830 – 190 years ago today. She was born, lived and died in Amherst, Massachusetts. She never married and spent much of her adult life in an upstairs bedroom in the house where she was raised. She took to wearing white – though not in this perhaps early photo, was rarely seen outside of her family, and was known by others through letters, if at all.
In a time when soaring, formal poetry was as celebrated as hip-hop is today, she quietly penned short, simple poems about nature, love and occasionally death. Other than a few that were published or that she shared with literary critic, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, most of her poetry – nearly 1800 works – got no further than a drawer in her desk, though Dickinson’s Irish maid and friend, Margaret Maher, eventually stored them for her in a trunk.
Emily Dickinson asked Maher to destroy her poems after her death, but she shared them with Emily’s sister Lavinia instead. In time, Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd edited and published them. Their edits removed references to Emily’s sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert, a relationship some speculate about. To students of poetry, the more telling edits were removal of the many end line dashes found in her original penned pages. It was not until 1955 that her complete works were published in their original form – with her unique punctuation.
During her life, only 10 of Emily Dickinson’s poems and a single letter were published. She was an enigma then, known locally as an eccentric fascinated with horticulture. Her simple, unique and breathless insights were silently held within a desk.
This little poem – and all the dashes I’ve come to use as I write – are for her.
Of Emily
I’m no poet of course
but I found today
I’ve had more pieces
published in my time
than Emily in all of hers
but of course she died
all too early after
once too often flirting
with that one last end
she could not stop for
while the opus of my work
is but passing bits and bytes
less lasting than one
of the breathless dashes
that punctuated her poems
which were all those before
distilled to their essence
and hidden away in her
Pandoran desk until we
might dare sense her slant
I sometimes wonder
if there is another Emily
out there today
somewhere upstairs
in a lonely bedroom
able at last to answer
Emily’s wistful wishes
but for now I know
she was the perfect poet
and we are only prose
