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A clover and a bee .. a Zen Revery?

I’ve been re-reading Emily Dickinson’s poems lately, one or two a day. Although her early editors removed her original groupings — the “fsaciles” or small booklets in which she grouped them — I enjoy the section “Nature” that groups together a major focus of her writing. Emily doesn’t write about nature as pretty or ornamental, though she certainly finds beauty and delight in it. But she writes more like a Zen monk, or like my…

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Talking Back to Emily D

I’m engaged with Dickinson through her letters and poems in a kind of long, late-night girls-sitting-up-and-braiding-each-other’s-hair kind of conversation. I can’t read anything she’s written without wanting to talk back. She inspires the opposite of passivity! She makes me think and feel so much, and she connects so well with what’s been going on inside me, those ineluctable currents of being that need closer and more passionate examination before they slip away into other currents.…

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The House of Emily D

Last night I saw the best play about Emily Dickinson I could imagine. It was a musical, and it was performed by fifth grade actors who brought this luminous ecstatic poet (“the Myth” as she was sometimes called) to life. It also brought to vivid life her bustling, growing Amherst (“the only thing silent in Amherst is the ‘h’”). Written by my brilliant playwright friend Judith Nielsen, music composed by a young and talented composer,…

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