Emily Dickinson

Yes, this is me. And I'm writing a post on Emily Dickinson when I know so little about her that I thought her name was spelled Dickensen until my conscience (which must be better educated than I am) pricked me. But I didn't write the following words, they are from a man named Donald Miller and his book Blue Like Jazz. He is writing about a lonely time in his life, and what he did to amuse himself.

"I would read the poetry of Emily Dickinson out loud and pretend to have conversations with her. I asked her what she meant by "zero at the bone." Emily Dickinson was the most interesting person I'd ever met. She was lovely, really, sort of quiet like a scared dog, but she engaged fine when she warmed up to me.

I had been living in that apartment for two years when I decided to cross the country to visit Amherst, Massachusetts, where Emily lived and died. Back then I imagined her as the perfect women, so quietly brilliant all those years, wrapping her poems neatly in bundles of paper and rope. I confess I daydreamed about living in her Amherst, in her century, befriending her during her days at Holyoke Seminary, walking with her through those summer hills she spoke so wonderfully of, the hills that, in the morning, untied their bonnets. My friend Laura at Reed tells me that half the guys she knows have had crushes on Emily Dickinson. She says it is was because Emily and yet not threatening, having lived under the thumb of her father so long. She thinks the reason guys get crushes on Emily Dickinson is because Emily is an intellectual submissive, and intellectual men fear the domination of women. I don't care why we get crushes of Emily Dickinson. It is a rite of passage for any thinking man. Any thinking American man.

I circled Amherst College and stopped at the Jones Library where some handwritten notes from Emily are kept, scribbles mostly, gentle pencil on a yellowed sheet within a glass case. It was like magic looking at them. I felt ashamed because I knew I had been reading her for only a year, and yet I felt as though I knew her, as though we were dear friends, what with her living in the apartment in Oregon with me and all.

The man at Jones Library told me where to find the homestead, not much of a place, he said, and indeed I had passed it on the way into town without knowing it. I thought I would have felt it in my chest or sensed it to my right. I thought it would have been largely marked. I followed the man's instructions from the library down along the shops back toward Boston a mile. Her house is not very much like you would think. Though it is big it is not grand, and there is a large tree in front that takes the view. A side door is greeted by concrete steps, the cheap sort, and the driveway has been paved. There is a historical marker, but it is small, and so the first thing a young man realizes when he visits the home of Emily Dickinson is that the world is, in fact, not as in love with her than he is. I wanted to gather the leaves, you know clean up the place. And I was looking all about the house, before making my approach, when I saw this thing that was not her but only in my mind was her, swing open the side door and set a foot quickly on the step.

I wrote in my journal that evening:
'I saw Emily Dickinson step out of a screen door and look at me with dark eyes, those endless dark eyes like the mouth of a cave, like pitch night set so lovely twice beneath her furrowed brow, her pale white skin gathering at the red of her lips, her long thin neck coming perfectly to her white dress flowing so gently and clean around her waist, down around her knees then slipping a tickle across her ankles. And then she went back into the house and it scared me to walk around the place.'



Penny says it is when they are in their twenties that people lose their minds.

I stopped imagining Emily immediately.