EMILY AND ME
A conversation with Daniela Gioseffi and Angelina Oberdan about Gioseffi's novel - WILD NIGHTS, WILD NIGHTS: THE STORY OF EMILY DICKINSON'S MASTER Angelina Oberdan: Throughout your publishing career, you've been interested in a wide array of topics: women's rights and middle-eastern dancing as well as international peace and the Italian American Renaissance in literature. You've written fourteen books of poetry and prose, and won an American Book Award for WOMEN ON WAR: INTERNATIONAL WRITINGS. What most recently influenced you to focus on Emily Dickinson, to write a scholarly essay about her life, and to write a historical novel about her possible romantic involvement with William Smith Clark, who could have been the "Master" figure of her poems and letters? I was interested when I saw that Robert Hass, a great lover of Dickinson, said that he liked the way you evoked Dickinson's life and times, and Galway Kinnell, who has also written about Dickinson, found the novel's nonfiction afterword stunning, plausible, and convincing, as did Alice Quinn, another Dickinson fan. What brought you to the writing of WILD NIGHTS, WILD NIGHTS: THE STORY OF EMILY DICKINSON'S MASTER with its non-fiction afterword: LOVER OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIST IN DARK DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC? Daniela Gioseffi: I based the drama of the novel on the non-fiction afterward . You are more well read than most any graduate student I've met, Angelina, and you have quite a thorough knowledge of American poetry yourself. I was so pleased that Robert Hass, Galway Kinnell, and Alice Quinn found my novel interesting. As you know, Dickinson biographers have been debating that great mystery of American literature for over a century: Who was the mysterious "Master" figure of Dickinson's letters and poems? While I was staying in the Emily Dickinson Room at the Wellspring Writers' Retreat in Ashfield , I visited the Dickinson Museum in Amherst nearby and returned that evening to my room. I turned on my laptop, and, suddenly, out sang Emily's poem, "My River runs to Thee / Blue Sea Wilt welcome me?" which I'd set to music over twenty-five years prior. I hadn't played that song or thought of it in years, and it just sang out of my laptop all by itself. I was shocked. It was a recording of Emily's poem that I'd composed and sang through the 1970's to my African harp (bought in Greenwich Village) at the budding of my own poet's career. This was in the days when I was among the first performance poets of New York's avant garde Soho "Happenings," or multi-media events. My earliest ventures into writing had been in playwriting and multimedia poetry for the stage. In fact, my choreo-poem, "The Sea Hag in the Cave of Sleep ," was first produced off-Broadway at the Cubiculo Theatre in 1969 and '70. During those years, I was awarded a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts that I used to create and organize the first Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk . In addition, Marguerite Harris and I were once featured reading Emily's poetry for a radio show on Pacifica Radio, WBAI-FM in Manhattan, and I set some of Emily's poems to music to be performed with the African harp or lyre. But-back to the day when I entered my writing studio-I had not turned on that Mp3 file when it played out of my computer. It was spring of 2003; I'd spent the day visiting the Emily Dickinson Museum , but I'd not even thought of that Dickinson poem in many years, and it played out of my laptop all by itself! I'd just been reading, at the Dickinson Museum, Ruth Owen Jones's article "'Neighbor-and friend-and Bridegroom-' ." And in that surreal moment, it was as if a ghost had bid the music to play from my computer in the town where William Smith Clark, the "Master" figure of Jones's thesis, was born. AO: It sounds like that track playing from your computer was a supernatural sign of sorts. Do you believe in signs? Are you superstitious in that way? DG: No, I would not call myself superstitious at all, but it was eerie to enter that room in the dark and have that old Mp3 file of a 1970's recording sing out, all by itself, from my computer. Since I'm not a believer in any occult phenomenon, I'm sure there's a scientific reason why this occurred. The laptop was turned on, and as I opened it that Mp3 on my hard drive was selected from hundreds of files and played out loud, all by itself. It startled and puzzled me. It made me think more intently about the powerful and erotic love that Dickinson speaks of in her poems and letters. It made me look more deeply into Jones's thesis about Will Clark and begin to read everything about the iconic poet's life I could get my hands on. AO: Can you expand on that idea: on how hearing that particular poem playing from your computer made you consider the erotic love in Dickinson's poems and on how it related to Jones's thesis about Dickinson and Clark? DG: I realized, for the first time, that the poem, "My River runs to Thee - " is a very intimate love song and an erotic beckoning; it seemed more than a mere hymn to nature or its divine creator. ED scholars do often find double-entendre in her love poems. Are the poems composed for nature's creator or for a lover? Or, both? I noticed, too, that the combined words-"will" and "it" forming "wilt"-could be a deliberate pun on the nickname, "Will," made by Dickinson when "Will" Clark was traveling to Europe and at sea. In Jones's article, her thesis that Clark was Emily's lover, or "Master" figure, is augmented by illustrating that Emily creates puns on "will" and "Will" throughout her poetry. AO: So you became convinced that William Smith Clark was Emily Dickinson's lover, her so-called "Master"? DG: Yes, the more I read, the more I realized that Jones's theory of Clark as the "Master" figure is the most plausible of all. After all, Will Clark was a great botanist, chemist, and geologist, and Dickinson's poetry is peppered with terms and concepts derived from those sciences. Botany was her concern as much as poetry. I'd only just discovered that Ashfield-where I was staying at Wellspring-was the hometown of Will Clark, Dickinson's probable "Master," when I went to the Dickinson Museum in Amherst that day. I found Jones's article in a reprint sold at the museum's bookshop. As I've explained, when I entered my dark room, coincidently named the Emily Dickinson Room at Wellspring House Writers' Retreat, out of my laptop played, My River runs to Thee - all on its own. It sang out even though I'd not turned that audio file on. I simply walked to the desk, opened the lid of the laptop, and out played that music file. Ironic to say the least! Anyway, I was there, living for three weeks, in the town of Clark's birthplace, a short distance from Amherst. I saw firsthand his humble beginnings compared to Dickinson's more opulent ones, and realized why her father would have forbade his daughter's marriage to the son of a humble country doctor, so concerned with the family fortunes was he. I realized that they must have been star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet which happens to be the last thing Dickinson was reading before she died-just six weeks after Will Clark-and was buried in the West Cemetery in her family plot just a few yards away from Clark's family plot. I was haunted by what I began to see as a meaningful love song written to Clark when he was away at sea, and he was known to be away at sea around the time she wrote that lyric. AO: Let's first discuss Dickinson's "opulent" beginnings. I've never had the chance to visit the Dickinson Homestead or the Evergreens. Would you describe them and how they affected you? DG: Basically, the Dickinson Homestead, where Emily lived for much of her life, still stands alongside the Evergreens, her brother's home; the compound has been converted into a museum open to the public, and it is only a half hour's drive from the Wellspring House Writers' Retreat. At the Evergreens, I saw the parlor where Emily recited poems and played the piano to entertain friends at her sister-in-law's, Sue's, soirees. Her beloved nephew's nursery was recently opened to the public for the first time, too. I imagined Emily there and felt connected to the Dickinson Homestead that I'd visited a few times before, as well. I stood beside Dickinson's auburn paisley shawl draped across her antique sleigh bed and beside the Franklin stove in her bedroom. I saw the cradle in which she was rocked; saw the white, pique housedress she wore; saw the window by which she sat at a small writing table. It was the window from which she lowered cookies and cakes in a basket on a string to the children playing on the front lawn of her big, brick, Federal-style house on Main Street: the window from which she lowered notes to friends, to a groundskeeper, to a servant who hid them under his hat, as Jones surmises, and delivered them through the woods to Clark's servant. I learned that Professor Clark lived just up and behind her house, and I read the lines: "Behind the Hill - the House behind - / There - Paradise - is found!" I saw the back stairs that led up to her bedroom-which she called "The Northwest Passage"-the secret place where she may have had rendezvous in the dark with the "Sweet William" of her love poems. I began to imagine Emily's conversations with her "Master," and found myself doing that quite constantly. AO: It must be a beautiful place-Amherst and the Dickinson Homestead-, but can you clarify something for me? You visited the Dickinson Homestead and the Evergreens in Amherst, Massachusetts, but you stayed at the Wellspring House in Ashfield, Massachusetts, correct? DG: Yes, the Wellspring House is located in Ashfield, a village that played a role in Massachusetts's history. Clark's cousin invented a telescope there, and some of the first advances in photography happened there, in that small New England town in the foothills of the Berkshires. The old Clark farmhouse, where William Smith Clark was born, is down Main Street from Wellspring House and around corner across from St. Joseph's Church. I almost bought that farmhouse; when it was up for sale in 2005, I was still spending time at the retreat writing Wild Nights, Wild Nights, and enthralled with the story of Clark and Emily, but another buyer beat me too it. AO: Really? You almost bought Clark's boyhood home? DG: Yes, I wanted to buy the Clark family's farmhouse, but was too late. It still has a plaque by the front door announcing it as William Smith Clark's birthplace. He became a well-known Civil War hero in the area and an important scientist. He founded the University of Massachusetts for agricultural science that was so important in Dickinson's day. Ashfield is also the home of Paris Press, the press that published Hart and Smith's OPEN ME CAREFULLY: EMILY DICKINSON'S INTIMATE LETTERS TO SUSAN HUNTINGTON DICKINSON . That's the text that defends a presumed love affair between Dickinson and Susan Gilbert Dickinson, the poet's sister-in-law. AO: And you don't agree with this proposition? You don't think Emily Dickinson had a homosexual affair with her sister-in-law, Sue Gilbert Dickinson? DG: Well, not exactly. In their edition of Dickinson's letters, Hart and Smith slant Dickinson's correspondence in defense of their thesis; putting all of her letters to Susan Gilbert-and only her letters to Sue-under one cover makes Sue appear to be Emily's "Master" because Dickinson's other affectionate correspondence with friends and relatives is omitted. I said, "not exactly," because I've come to understand that Dickinson most likely did have homoerotic feelings for Sue Gilbert when they were young. Homoerotic friendships were common and the norm between friends in the antebellum period, and homosexuality-as we think of it today-is a different matter. In any case, so many great artists, including Walt Whitman, have a bi-sexual nature, an ability to identify with either sex. Shakespeare had to understand both Romeo and Juliet to write his convincing love story, and Tolstoy certainly lived well in the mind and body of Anna Karenina, if you see what I mean. Like many great artists in her mental orientation, Dickinson was able to empathize with or to love anyone whose intellect or sensibility she admired greatly. The three "Master" love letters, however, talk of a man with a beard, and seem to be addresses to a male figure. I do think she admired and had homoerotic feelings for her girlhood friend, Sue Gilbert. However, she had these feelings prior to falling in love with William Smith Clark. And, as I've explained, homoerotic relationships were common in the antebellum period, whether consummated or not; women and men were very affectionate and loving toward same sex friends. They didn't think of these affectionate friendships as homosexual in the way we define such orientations in our own times. And now, even Abraham Lincoln is thought to have had such a relationship, too, unrequited or not. Also, Emily was "courting" Susan Gilbert in the romantic letters showcased by Hart and Smith, because she wanted her brother to marry Sue. She was imitating what she and Susan read in Romantic novels by the Brontė sisters and George Eliot, among others. In fact-because she desperately wanted Sue to become a part of her family, to marry her brother, Austin-it is likely that she was acting out the courtship that Austin was not properly performing in correspondence. AO: Why do you think Dickinson wanted her brother to marry Sue so badly? DG: I think Dickinson saw that a marriage between Sue and her brother was more than a good match; it would also benefit her. Their marriage would provide her with a female intellectual companion, a role that was left vacant in her life and could not be filled by her mother, Emily Norcross, or her sister, Lavinia. Sue was pretty, admired, and intellectually astute, and she could provide the mental stimulation Dickinson needed. They read and discussed poetry and literature together, and women's issues, too. In the nineteenth century, women were segregated from male society-meant to stay in their place at home or in sewing circle or in Bible study classes (as Dickinson's father firmly believed)-, and consequently, intelligent women needed close friendships with each other. Edward Dickinson, Emily's father, wrote publicly about his philosophy that women were meant to stay at home. He thought it socially improper for women to publish their writings, and felt that women's education was meant merely to enrich the spiritual life of the family and help in the education of male children. Especially because she was pressured by the rigorous beliefs of her father, Dickinson reached out to Sue and the intellectual friendship she offered. AO: All in all, what effect do you think that Sue had on Emily? DG: Susan Gilbert Dickinson ended up being essential to Emily's development as a poet. Her importance in Emily's life, as a seminal influence on the literary genius, is doubtless. Sue was an extrAOrdinarily independent woman and an eloquent thinker. Without a strong woman friend like Sue, Emily might not have developed her prowess as a poet. It's clear that-although Emily might have projected a love affair onto Susan and might have had a "crush" on her when they were young-the act of putting all correspondence from Dickinson to Sue under one cover slants the view of their relationship. It makes Sue appear to be Emily's "Master" figure, because all the other affectionate and loving letters Dickinson sent to friends and relatives are omitted. She wrote affectionately to Abiah Root, Samuel Bowles, Elizabeth Holland, and several others. We have only one-third of Dickinson's voluminous correspondence, as most of it, including the very possible exchanges with Will Clark, was burned as she requested Lavinia to do upon her death. Lavinia burned her letters, but refused to burn the many poems she was amazed to find in Dickinson's bedroom drawer amidst them the three mysterious "Master Letters" which have been of great speculation among her biographers. It was Victorian practice to burn one's correspondence, so intimate in the days prior to telephones, computers, and e-mail. Scholars attest to how affectionately Emily wrote many of her female and male friends with imaginative and even erotic innuendo. AO: Did Emily and Sue always get along so well? I think I read that they had their differences. DG: In fact, the two women did not agree on important issues of religion. They took differing spiritual paths. They even had a falling out prior to the death of Austin and Sue's son's death ; after which, the poet didn't visit the Evergreens for approximately fifteen years. Also, if Sue had known about Dickinson's affair with Will, she would have frowned severely upon it, because Will was a married man. As a married woman, Sue would have taken offense, especially because Austin eventually strayed from their marriage to have an affair with another married woman . AO: So explain to me the thesis of your essay and your novel. DG: Although Dickinson may very well have been smitten with Sue-which was transferred to her brother with a vicarious romantic ardor, enough to cause him to marry Sue-Open Me Carefully is only one part of the story. I do not believe that Sue is the bearded "Master" figure of Dickinson's "Master" letters and poems. The more plausible thesis is that proposed by Ruth Owen Jones. Jones argues that William Smith Clark-the first Ph.D. professor of botany, horticulture, and chemistry at Amherst College, the founder and first acting president of U. Mass -is the most plausible possibility of all. Jones gives much evidence for Clark as Dickinson's "Master." AO: And why do you think it was Ruth Owen Jones who unearthed the identity of Dickinson's "Master" figure when so many literary scholars have failed to do so in their analysis of primary sources? DG: Jones is a historian of the Amherst area, a guide at the Dickinson Museum, an alumna of the University of Massachusetts . She lives down Amity Street from the Jones and Frost libraries-nearby the Dickinson Homestead-where much of the history of the town and its people is housed. She has served as President or Chair of the Amherst Historical Commission, and she's a gardener who researched the Victorian gardens of her town. These are the factors that allowed her to discover and note what others failed to. Jones's vantage point allowed her to mesh the chronology of Emily Dickinson's life to Clark's and to prove that Clark was a prominent member of the poet's village society and a business associate of her brother and father. Austin Dickinson and Clark had business ventures together: renovating the town commons and founding a water company. I agree with Jones that Clark, a formidable intellect of his day, may well have been the catalyst for Emily's ardent and romantic imagination. He believed in and preached women's right to an education, (and he encouraged his sister to write poetry) and some of Dickinson's few published poems appear in the same periodicals that include his essays. He also paid much attention to literature written by women and even wrote to some reviews of what he read. It is more than likely that he was the intended recipient of Dickinson's love poems and "Master" letters. He fits better than any of Dickinson's other presumed lovers. Even Cynthia Griffin Wolff, in her careful study titled EMILY DICKINSON concludes, as Jones and I do, that neither Reverend Wadsworth of Philadelphia, nor editor Samuel Bowles of The Springfield Republican, nor JuDGe Otis Lord were the intended recipients of Dickinson's letters to her "Master" figure-though she did have a correspondence and love affair, even a marriage engagement with Otis Lord later in her life, when the popular myth of her seclusion prevails. She never did lead all that much of a secluded life; her brother and sister and their children were always around the homestead as were field workers and day servants; her parents were always coming and going, and her father, a statesmen and lawyer, brought his associates to visit her parlor and dining room; also the Amherst College students were coming and going nearby, and her faithful maid, Maggie Maher was around, et cetera. Her life was less secluded than poets of our day who often live alone, day after day. And she actually published in the scribal sense sending her poems to more than forty correspondents. AO: Can you tell me more about William Smith Clark? Describe him for me. DG: He was lively, a great conversationalist and storyteller, a scientific innovator. Clark was far more known and accomplished than Dickinson was during her lifetime. However, he came from the home of a poor country doctor of Ashfield, and he was social climbing in Amherst where Emily's family was of the cream of Amherst's rural village society. Dashing and charming, Clark taught the poet's favorite subjects at Amherst College, next door to her home. He was among the first professors of science of that venerable New England institution of higher learning to invite women to attend his chemistry and horticultural lectures. Clark believed that women had the right to an education and-unlike Dickinson's father-to a profession as well. Having traveled in Europe, he used affectionately Italian style greetings, hugging and kissing, and he wrote affectionate letters to his students with a tone similar to Dickinson's, which was unlike the more reserved correspondence of her brother and father. The members of the Dickinson family, though fiercely loyal to one another, showed no physical affection, and they were laconic in the Calvinist New England demeanor. During his travels, Clark observed styles of behavior alien to Amherst's Victorian Society. When he returned from his travels, he was somewhat of a shock to Amherst's rural aristocracy with his affectionate and lively demeanor. I can imagine him nurturing Emily Dickinson's love of gardening, her plant conservatory, and herbarium! He had large greenhouses and developed them for the village. He brought exotic plants back from the Orient. I'm sure he nurtured her poetry, too. AO: Didn't you mention earlier that Will Clark also fought in the Civil War? DG: Yes, Clark went off to fight in the Civil War because he was a staunch anti-slavery activist, and he left Amherst just around the time when scholars agree that there was a period of trauma in Emily's life that inspired her richest outpouring of poetry, the period in which she sewed her most finished verses into fascicles. AO: In the book, you demonstrate that there's evidence in Dickinson's poetry to support the argument that Clark was her lover, her "Master." But what is the evidence in her "Master" letters that supports this theory? DG: Actually one of Jones's important points is that it's suspicious that Clark, such a well known personage around and about Amherst and a business associate of Dickinson's father and brother appears only twice in Dickinson's surviving correspondence of which approximately only a third is estimated by biographers to have been preserved. One can surmise that Clark, the eminent botanist and horticulturalist of the town is conspicuously absent from the gardening poet's correspondence because of expurgation. All references, but two, were likely destroyed to avoid a scandal between the two most eminent families of the town: the Dickinsons and the Willistons. The affair, if disclosed, would have disrupted the society of the village and the functioning of Amherst Seminary, so central to the village's welfare and economy. Both Squire Dickinson and Squire Williston served on the board of the seminary that was then in transition into a college that taught the sciences, and Will Clark was married to Williston's adopted daughter, Harriet Richards. It would have been a scandal, upsetting the friendship between two eminent trustees of the seminary, as well as ruining Clark's career as a professor of science whose father-in-law was an important benefactor of the seminary. Sam Williston financed a new building and laboratory for Amherst Seminary of which Dickinson's father was a longtime treasurer and trustee. As you know, Emily's grandfather had founded the college. The "Master" with a beard in the "Master Letters" is mentioned as someone with whom Dickinson walked in the meadows with her dog, someone close who seems to have lived in Amherst and been involved with flowers and horticulture. Clark was the chief botanist of the town and lived in a house behind a hill in back of her homestead, a house with many gardens and greenhouses; Emily wrote, "Behind the Hill - the House behind - / There - Paradise - is found!" of Clark, who she called her "Neighbor - and friend - and Bridegroom" in another telling poem. There is much evidence of Will Clark in Dickinson's texts if they are studied closely. For example, when Will Clark went off to fight in the Civil War, she wrote: "The Red upon the Hill / Taketh away my will -." Many other textual clues are rampant, especially mentioning the elements of the sciences that Clark taught at Amherst College. AO: Could you tell me a little more about these two families? DG: Sure, these two families-the latter into which Clark was married-were the leaders and builders of Amherst society and its livelihood. As you know, Amherst College was founded by Samuel Dickinson, Emily's grandfather, as a Puritan seminary meant to produce evangelical missionaries of the Calvinist faith. Samuel Williston, Clark's father-in-law, was the wealthiest benefactor of Western Massachusetts and served as a trustee of the university along with Dickinson's father, Edward. He funded the building of the science laboratory where Clark taught (upon his return from Gottingen with his European Ph.D.)., Austin, Emily's brother, later served as a trustee and treasurer of Amherst College, just as her father had. Clark married Harriet Richards Williston, and I can imagine that Clark married Harriet, nicknamed "The Queen," in order to advance his ambitious career, especially after Dickinson's father, Edward, might have spurned him as Emily's suitor. He rose from humble beginnings on the wings of his intellect and charm, and he did become one of the most important botanists of his time. Clark and Harriet lived across a wood behind the Dickinson homestead and northwest of it-around the corner so to speak. Also Emily's niece, Martha Dickinson, was born the same day as Clark's daughter and went to school with her. I bet Emily baked ginger cakes for the children Martha played with, including, no doubt, Clark's daughter, and she likely sent flowers to his wife, upon her convalescence, too. Harriet, nicknamed "The Queen" had several children, some of whom died. In fact, I think Dickinson's verse confirms this idea: Could - I do more - for Thee - AO: I love her poems, even her short ones like the one you just recited. DG: Of course, that's why so many literary scholars and poets are enamored with Dickinson's mind and imagination and are extremely curious about "the clock that made her tick." She produced precise and eloquent verse, and publication did not seem to be her goal. "Publication - is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man -" she wrote disparagingly. Though it appears that publication didn't concern her, Dickinson's writing was read by many intelligent minds and was circulated in the scribal sense. Though it was not officially published, there are at least forty known recipients of her poetry, like I mentioned earlier. AO: Do you think having an audience was necessary for Dickinson? Do you think she would have written so much without an audience? DG: I don't think she could have written such fine work for herself, alone, as some people want to believe. She had lovers, friends, and readers who read her work with interest, and she was acquainted with important editors of her day: Thomas Wentworth Higginson of The Atlantic Monthly, Samuel Bowles of The Springfield Republican, Joshua Holland of Scribner's Magazine. And she was a reader of the best women writers of her day: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Brontės, George Elliot, George Sand, and probably Margaret Fuller and Lousia May Alcott, and perhaps Madam de Staėl of an earlier day. Barrett Browning's novel in verse, Aurora Leigh, was very important to her. And of course she read Emerson, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, the Bible, and much other good literature. Reading is the best teacher of writing, but she was also communicating with living beings, very intensely, all of her life. In fact, Emily was far less isolated than many women poets of our time. She was rarely without correspondents or family, and a popular poet and novelist of the day had been her school chum, Helen Hunt Jackson, and in later life when they were reunited, Jackson encouraged her greatly. At the Dickinson Homestead, Emily's her sister, Lavinia, occupied the bedroom across the hall from hers, and they were in close consort all of their lives. The Irish maid, Maggie Maher, and the handyman, Tom Kelly, were readily available. Austin and Sue, with their son and daughter, lived next door. And many of the college's professors, including Will Clark, and their students came and went from her prominent father's household. Clearly, the idea of Dickinson's isolation has become much exaggerated, and I feel it's unfair for young scholars and poets to be made to feel that she wrote so well in a vacuum without feedback. AO: And how do you combine Dickinson's poems, her letters, the historical facts, and the romance to create an effective portrayal of the love between Dickinson and Clark? DG: I've peppered my novel with many of her poems having to do with drama of her love affair with Clark and some of her public domain letters. I've used the earlier versions of the poems, now in public domain, for reasons of expensive copyright. Her texts help to dramatize the novel. I've attempted to approximate the story of Dickinson's and Clark's profound love and common interest in science-particularly botany, horticulture, chemistry, and ornithology-based on fact. Dickinson admired imagination. She dwelt in "possibility" which was her word for poetry and its powers. And she's one of our most scientifically aware poets. The theme of my novel involves Dickinson and her "Master," Clark, as part of the American Enlightenment, the Transcendental Movement led by Alcott, Emerson, and Fuller that brought America out of the Puritan Age of Iron and the dictates of Calvinist dogma into the light of scientific truth and the Age of Darwinian ideals, proving we are all one human race. Darwin's motive was an anti-slavery one at its core: to prove we are all descended from the same primates and the same gene pool. My life has been devoted to the cause of civil and human rights, in both my activism and my writing. I also spent five years writing and editing, On Prejudice: A Global Perspective , Dickinson was of an anti-slavery society as was Clark. I bring that out in my book about them. They were great Americans of the cultural and scientific enlightenment of our nation. AO: That's a much different idea of Emily than I was taught in school. As I remember it, she was always portrayed as being a sort of recluse. In fact, I think many people don't understand that a poet can be social. They believe a poet needs to be solitary to write well. DG: Poets need solitude in which to write, and Dickinson often spent time alone in her room at her desk, but the idea of her seclusion has been magnified into an exaggerated myth. It's wrong and cruel to teach young poets that they can write well and create sterling poetry without the feedback of an audience, in total solitude, because Emily Dickinson did so. She was quite social, a Belle of Amherst in her youthful days. She was often part of a very peopled world even in her later years when she refused to leave her father's grounds. She had intelligent and well read people whom she knew would read her poems, at least forty correspondents who read her work, some the finest literary editors of the time, Thomas Wentworth Higginson of THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Paul Bowles of THE SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN, Joshua Holland of SCRIBER'S, and his wife, Elizabeth, one of her closest friends. Her Norcross cousins in CambriDGeport became part of Emerson's literary salon. Helen Hunt Jackson, a well-known and popular poet and novelist of the day, was her old school chum in Amherst, and later in life when they were reunited, Jackson told Dickinson that she was a great poet and insisted on publishing her in an anthology of poetry. Jackson wanted to serve as Dickinson's literary executor, but she died before she could. Dickinson only consented to anonymous publication in her lifetime, because she was the rural aristocratic daughter of a well-known statesman, a federal congressman, and a state senator of Massachusetts. The Dickinson name was known and prestigious in the Pioneer Valley, and it wasn't ladylike for women of her upper class station to publish. "Publication is the auction / of the Mind of Man," she wrote. Yet, I feel she fashioned her fascicles of poems for other eyes to read, especially those of her lover, Will Clark, who was a champion of women's right to an education and a follower of women's literature. That's why her poems have passionate resonance; they had intended audiences in the scribal sense, within her correspondence and among her friends, despite her father's position forbidding her to publish. The myths about her are slanted and exaggerated. AO: In addition to being a poet-among other things-this venture has turned you into a Dickinson scholar as well, hasn't it? DG: Yes. I've read just about everything written about her life and work. When I started this phase of my life, I had a rough idea of her life in Amherst, and had bought into the mythology myself, and already knew some of her work by heart, but I've been studying it-her letters, the mores of her era-ever since spring 2003 when that lyric played by itself out of my laptop in "The Emily Dickinson Room" at Wellspring Writers Retreat in Ashfield. AO: In becoming a Dickinson scholar, what were some of the books you've turned to? DG: I've studied Richard B. Sewell's, THE LIFE OF EMILY DICKINSON ; Alfred Habegger's MY WARS ARE LAID AWAY IN BOOK ; and THE WORLD OF EMILY DICKINSON by Polly Longsworth. And I've read such works as A HISTORICAL GUIDE TO EMILY DICKINSON as well as subscribed-as a member of The Emily Dickinson Society-to THE EMILY DICKINSON JOURNAL. I've looked carefully at THE MASTER LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON , and read through all of her poems, several times. Once-in one non-stop sitting-I read all the way through R.W. Franklin's definitive collection of all her nearly 1,800 known poems. After reading MY EMILY BY SUSAN HOWE , I realized that Howe is correct in saying that there is much of Dickinson's poetry that is impenetrable and enigmatic, and that this is probably because the verses were never completed by the poet but sketched out as notes for a poem. But, I've concluded that, there is new meaning in many of her works, not seen there by Howe or others, if Dickinson's poetry is read by someone who accepts, even assumes, that Will Clark was her lover, her "Master." I could go on and on about all I studied to write my novel with a factual base, but let me simply say that much respected scholarship has passed before my eyes and entered my spirit and mind in the research and writing of what I hope is meaningful, historic, biographical novel. Dickinson really became a bit of an obsession for me. AO: You mentioned Richard B. Sewall's THE LIFE OF EMILY DICKINSON; what did you think of it? I know his book is well respected. DG: Yes, and the "Emily" I portrayed in my novel, is more like the woman in the portrait at the back of Sewall's biography, earthy and assured; she's more womanly than the sickly, seventeen-year-old girl-as is portrayed in the well-known daguerreotype. I wrote my novel based on facts disclosed by Sewall, Jones, and others. My "Emily" is a mature woman, a hearty woman of quizzical and sardonic gaze who loves to ramble alone in the woods with her big dog in search of rare specimens of wild flowers. She's a woman with big steady brown eyes that say, "I've lived for art and love alike. I have known carnal love, and I am fully erotic woman." I feel sure that Sewall, her worthy biographer, would not have included the photo-with what she called, her "Gypsy Face"-at the back of his book if he did not strongly suspect if might well be a portrait of the poet at about thirty-three-years of age. Faces were important to Emily Dickinson; she kept portraits of George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her room. Because of this, I feel strongly that she'd have wanted a more real view of herself as a mature woman to be known. I invite all who are interested to study each feature in the photo at the back of the Sewall biography and compare it with the known, youthful daguerreotype, taken at a time when the poet was sickly, just arisen from a long illness in bed. I've a feeling that those gifted with an eye for visual will agree with that the mature photo is Dickinson with a slightly plumper, or wider, face than she had in her youth. The features all match in terms of distance between eyes and nose and mouth, hair style, earlobes, neckline, et cetera. AO: I believe you've told me that you spent about five years writing and researching this novel. Why do you think you've become so intensely interested in telling what you believe to be Dickinson's more correct biography? DG: I began to feel haunted by the spirit of an untold love story, and I think I wanted to understand what inspired the most iconic woman poet of my country. I found the true story to be quite different than the mythical one about a secluded spinster. The strange happening of her imploring love poem playing out of my laptop on its own inspired me to read more. The more I learned the more excited I became about telling a fascinating untold love story of our country's greatest woman poet; WILD NIGHTS, WILD NIGHTS, my title, comes from her most erotic love poem. I wrote a novel that incorporated the facts verifying the identity of her "Master" as Professor Clark, botanist of Amherst College. It's a novel with a non-fiction afterword upon which the drama of the story is based. It augments Jones's idea that Will Clark was Dickinson's lover in her mysterious love letters. After a life in American poetry, I was fascinated to try and understand the true story of Dickinson's life and what compelled her to write. AO: The more I know about Emily Dickinson, the more connected to her I feel-as I'm sure you do. DG: I feel connected to her mind and spirit. I believe that she has more in common with other American poets than is portrayed by the myths surrounding her. Emily wrote of violets and daises, but she loved to walk in the woods as much as Thoreau did. She is one of our most scientifically aware poets. She sought to discover new elements of nature and to discover the truth of emotional powers. She observed sunlight and shadow, natural wonder, death and decay, and the beauty of her natural world. She found truth and beauty were one as did Keats, and she understood Emerson's philosophy of "Nature" and "The Poet" in his seminal essays of the Transcendental Movement, inspired in him by his beloved Aunt Mary Moody and her insightful diaries. In his essay, "The Poets," Emerson writes that rhyme and meter do not make the poem, but that the poem's contents must be organic to its style and form, and Dickinson was greatly influenced by this. She rebelled against Higginson's and Susan's attempts to make her conform to the traditional poetic style of her day with its obvious rhymes and meters. That a poem should first "mean" and then "be" would have been Emerson's creed. Emerson insisted that it is the thought that sends us into poetry, not the techniques of writing. He saw the ideal poet as a shaman of natural wonders and ethical behavior, as arising from human feeling and empathy more than from dogma. Dickinson's verses were meant for oral delivery. She used elocution dashes-rather than punctuation-or so many of us Dickinson scholars believe. Young women of the day were trained in elocution more than in discursive writing, and school examinations and rhetoric were more often given and taught orally then, in a day when ink and paper were expensive commodities and typewriters not yet invented. Human speech is overlaid on our pulmonary system, and is a product of our life's breath. We articulate our exhaled breath, and punctuation comes from the natural pauses in speech. Dickinson seems to have chosen a style of oral interpretation for marking pauses in her poetic texts. AO: You clearly feel connected to Dickinson aesthetically. What about religiously? DG: "Poets All" was Emily's religion as it is mine. She was actually a transcendentalist who embraced a German sort of Pantheism, as did Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Smith Clark, her brother, and many of the other forward-thinking intellectuals of her time. There was a fervent movement among the intelligentsia of Dickinson's that decried the restraints of Puritanical Calvinist dogma. It held scientific and social advancement back. Darwinism was being born and decried by literal interpretations of scripture, just as in our own days of the Bush Administration and far rightwing, born-again religiosity.. There was a so-called "Great Revival" sweeping the Pioneer Valley in Dickinson's day, just as fanatical religiosity is blooming in our time, fueling the "War on Terror." Dickinson, however, refused to be "born again" from her days at Mary Lyon's Calvinist Female Seminary until her death-unlike the rest of her family. Many fine writers of New England were rebelling against Creationism. Antidisestablishmentarianism was afoot. The separation of church and state was being codified. Emily did question her father's authority when it came to her beliefs, just as we feminists did in the 1970's and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Dickinson followed Emerson's rebellion against the tyranny of New England Puritanism-and into the light of Transcendentalism- more like Buddhism with its non-theism- as in his essays, "Nature" and "The Poet." When the Aurora Borealis was seen in New England, it was imagined by many to be a sign of Armageddon. It helped spur Revivalism and Born Again Christianity (as the tsunami and Age of International Terrorism have turned people toward Fundamentalist beliefs), Emily maintained her transcendentalist stance: hiding in the basement with a book of poetry and a candle when her father rounded up the family for church. I think of her poem: Some keep the Sabbath going to church -I identify strongly with her inability to bear the religious hypocrisy she saw around her in Evangelical fervor. Putting religion before science is foolish, as even if you believe in a god, or follow one of the medieval religions that beget superstition and hypocrisy, creation is made of the truths of science and the natural world. Forward thinkers were espousing women's right to an education and human equality for all, in Emily's day just as the peacemakers are today. They abhorred the injustices they saw around them, especially in the slavery, often accepted by those who pretended to believe in Christ. Many then, also, ignored "The Sermon on the Mount," as they pillaged and fought and preached "fire and brimstone" over true charity and love. I think Emily must have read Hawthorne's "The Maypole of Marymount,' in which he argues against the evils of Puritanism and literal use of scripture in the "Age of Iron" as opposed to the Spiritual Enlightenment afforded by transcendental respect for the study of nature. AO: Do you see many similarities between her plight and yours? DG: Just as my life has been clouded by fanatical religiosity in the Age of Terrorism, so was hers emergent from the "Puritan Age of Iron," as Hawthorne called it. THE SCARLET LETTER is about religious hypocrisy and how it destroys truly humane character. Charles Dickens was writing of social injustice and moral truths as well, and was popular here in America back then. I live in the shadow of misery created in my time by the last presidential administration that thought God led the U.S. to bomb and murder the Mid-East into "democracy" as insane Fundamentalist Muslims match his ardor for self-righteous tyranny. I had to hide from the attack on my city in 2001, as Emily had to hide in her basement on Sunday mornings to keep from being dragged to the parish church by her austere father. When Samuel Dickinson founded Amherst College, it was a seminary meant to fashion Christian missionaries who would fan out across the country and preach. Many, if not all, ignored the essence of true Christianity, the beatitudes. This is similar to what that our warmongering, military profiteering American administrations have done in our time as imperialist puppets of war industrialists and oil profiteers. We need more true prophets of human decency and kindness and far fewer weapons profiteers in our time. However, it is true that Helen Hunt Jackson and Mabel Loomis Todd understood Dickinson's poetry to a great extent. And Sue Gilbert knew that Emily's poetry was original and insightful, and she wrote a telling obituary about her sister-in-law that says much that's accurate. Dickinson should not be thought of as not a lonely little wretch without a support system at all, but surrounded by women who understood her work and encouraged it. AO: That's largely how I feel. When it comes to my poetry, I really have a strong support system of women writers who understand my poetry, especially you and Amy Fleury. DG: Probably the important women in Dickinson's life understood her better than her father, and some of the men, but certainly Sue Gilbert, Helen Hunt Jackson were an important support system, along with the female writers she read. Mabel Loomis Todd, Austin's mistress, was utterly instrumental in preserving Dickinson's poetry for publication. Her sister, Lavinia, wanted to preserve it, but could never have done it without Mabel who went Higginson, her first in-house editor, to bring it to the light of day after her death. If it was Sue who nurtured her intellect early on, it was Helen Hunt Jackson, a successful writer and social activist of her time, who called her a great poet and urged her to publish her work. It was women-importantly Lavinia and Mabel Loomis Todd, and her niece Matty, and Mabel's daughter, too-who nurtured her art with conviction and brought it to light. Higginson was encouraging and instrumental as well, and should not be blamed for her lack of publication during her lifetime. She did not want to publish, because it was not a ladylike thing to nor was it allowed a statesman's daughter. AO: What's your feminist take on Dickinson's situation? DG: Girls were completely repressed then-even more than now in America. The women's rights movement was only newly born. Her father was among the first of American men to believe that a woman deserved any education, even though he thought it was meant for the graces of her home life as a wife and mother. I grew up always hearing my Italian immigrant father longing for a son. He'd bemoan, "If only I had a son to carry on the name!" whenever we three sisters upset him. Women were just beginning to bloom out of their shells in Emily's day, and in mine, and much of the world's womanhood is still trapped in the Dark Ages. Birth control only became legal three years before I was born. My mother was of the first generation to be given the vote. And, oh, what a battle the movement for suffrage was! It took much suffering and endless activism-over a full century-from its inception to completion. My Italian Catholic aunts never even attended the state college three miles from home that I did. And when I did attend Montclair University, then a smaller college in 1956, it was against my father's best advice. Though he'd struggled for a good education and worked his way through degrees from Union College and Columbia University, his mantra was, "What does a girl need an education fo? She only marries and has babies." Similarly, Emily Norcross, Dickinson's mother, and her sister, Lavinia, were content as homemakers who practiced housekeeping above reading or writing. Neither Emily nor I were interested in only households. "God save me from what women call Households!" she declared in a letter. AO: Would you say that you feel connected to Emily as woman in addition to feeling connected to her as a poet? DG: Well, Emily was a self-liberated woman for her time in her quiet way. She was not interested in the "dimity convictions" of gentlewomen. And even though my father said to me, "Why should a girl go to college? It's a waste." he did help me a bit with tuition and books, and he did encourage my reading. He gave mixed messages, like Dickinson's father who was proud of her conversational abilities and intellectual refinements. I went to college and graduate school on scholarships in any case, my father didn't try to stop me. I studied and read literature and science as Dickinson did, much on my own as well. She studied biology, chemistry, horticulture, ornithology, geology, literature, history, and lexicography, and not only in school. AO: What other parallels do you see between your life and Dickinson's? DG: Emily and I both lived during periods of war. I was born in the midst of World War II, and Emily lived through the Anti-slavery Movement and the Civil War (which almost took her lover from her). I lived through the Civil Rights Movement- was nearly killed by the Ku Klux Klan-and the Vietnam War, which almost took my husband and my daughter's father from me, though I was for much of my writing life without a husband. AO: What about temperament? Do you think Emily's temperament may have been similar to your own? DG: Well, we're both a "middle child." We longed to please others: being neither the privileged older child nor the beloved baby. Emily was born in between her older brother, Austin, and her younger sister, Lavinia, and she spent her whole life with them nearby. Her father is known to have valued his son's intellect most of all. He enjoyed Austin's wit and letter writing, more than he ever read Emily's poetry it seems. Emily was a fine gardener and a good baker, who loved to give gifts from her flower garden and her brick oven. They say liking to feed people well is a sign of an affectionate and nurturing nature. People enjoy my cooking it seems. Being known as a good cook doesn't have to make you less of a poet. Emily's townspeople knew her as a baker, a gardener, and a daughter of an important politician of Massachusetts. Only a chosen few knew her as a poet. Really, if she'd had an affair with a married man, it would have been less unusual than her being a successful, widely published poet. AO: That brings me to a point I wanted to make earlier. Even though I'm also a lover of nineteenth-century romance, even though I'm somewhat enamored with William Clark myself, it's difficult for me to imagine Emily Dickinson having an affair with a married man. DG: I believe that Emily and Will fell in love before Clark was married, but also, when we think of Dickinson's life as devoid of marriage, we don't realize that there were few eligible men for her or her sister, Lavinia, in Amherst's rural aristocracy. There were five young women of Dickinson's social class to every eligible bachelor-a fact that literary critics who expound on her spinsterhood should be more aware of. The westward movement during the years after the Louisiana Purchase called away many of Amherst's eligible bachelors, and the Civil War took many more from her area. Also, men whose wives had still born infants, as Clark's wife had, were advised to leave their wives alone and deny themselves marital bliss until after pregnancies were over. Clark's wife was often pregnant; they had eight children, and two of his children died early on, so no doubt he was afraid to go near his wife when she in what was called "confinement." Pregnant women did not socialize and were advised to stay at home in Dickinson's day. Carriage, buggy, and horseback rides were far more jarring and rigorous, especially along rutted dirt roads, than car and train rides in our time. If Clark was a married man and Emily was his "Mistress" as he was her "Master," this would not have been so uncommon, even in Victorian times. In fact, her cousin, Maria Whitney, was likely Samuel Bowles' "mistress" and intellectual companion, just as Mabel Loomis Todd was her brother's mistress. Those Victorians were never as Victorian as we sometimes imagine them to have been. There was plenty of straying outside marriage. The Reverend Beecher, originally of Amherst, was caught in an affair with a married woman of his parish at the Plymouth Church here in Brooklyn Heights where Abraham Lincoln gave a famous anti-slavery speech in New York City. Beecher's affair was the talk of the town and newspapers here. Affairs between married people really weren't as unusual as one might imagine then. Christopher Benfey's book, A SUMMER OF HUMMINGBIRDS: LOVE, ART, AND SCANDAL IN THE INTERSECTING WORLDS OF EMILY DICKINSON, MARK TWAIN, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, AND MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE , has much to do with scandal among the American intelligentsia of the day, and Mabel's and Austin's affair is the subject of a book by the fine Dickinson scholar, Polly Longsworth. Mabel's husband Todd, a professor of astronomy at Amherst College was a real womanizer, and drove Mabel to seek solace with Austin Dickinson, just as Austin was probably denied marital bliss by Susan Gilbert who had good reason to fear childbirth, her sister Mary having died miserably in giving birth to a baby who also died. Childbirth was often a dangerous and gruesome event. Childbed fever was still rampant before the age of antibiotics. I think Dickinson's mother was never really healthy again after the birth of Dickinson's sister, Lavinia. Biographers know Dickinson's mother had a very difficult childbirth with Lavinia, and Emily as a small child heard the screams. AO: So, Austin Dickinson's mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, was responsible for the publication of much of Emily's poetry. Could you tell me more about her? DG: Many don't realize it was Austin Dickinson's illicit amore who saw to the editing and publishing of Emily's first volumes of poetry. Few poets or readers of Dickinson are aware that it is Mabel's drawing of Indian Pipes, one of Emily's favorite wildflowers, that graces the cover of the first edition of Dickinson's poems. But, Mabel, though she came to sing and play the piano in Dickinson's parlor while Emily enjoyed listening from upstairs, never got to meet the in person. Even though Emily is supposed to have died of Bright's disease or kidney failure, it's odd that she died just six weeks after Clark, while reading Romeo and Juliet, the story of star-crossed lovers. And she marked the passage of Juliet's that reads, "I know an apothecary ." Ruth Owen Jones, the historian of Amherst, who inspired my novel, makes this point. Clark is said to have died of a broken heart. Perhaps, Emily also did. Nearly everyone she loved died during the last few years of her life. People dropped like flies in those days from typhoid, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. Death was a real constant in her life. It was not any psychological obsession as some critics who fail to read medical history claim. Death was a reality all around her to be dealt with philosophically in poetry. At least five of her best friends died before she reached the age of fifteen years old, and the only portrait that people accept of her as authentic is one taken of her at sixteen or seventeen just after a severe illness that nearly pulled her into death's dominion along with many of her schoolmates. She lived with a cemetery outside her window until the age of fifteen when the family returned to the previously mentioned Dickinson Homestead on Main Street. One thing most literary biographers often neglect to emphasize is the medical science of the times in which their subjects lived. There are few index entries, if any, of diseases in the most eminent biographies of the poet dealing with the issues that made her, as some critics write, "obsessed" with death in her poetry. AO: That's a very apt insight. Since we're nearing the end of our interview, is there anything else you would like to say about Emily Dickinson or about your novel? DG: Yes, I want to thank you for your interest, because I see that you are an accomplished reader and writer yourself, especially for a woman of your age. I want to explain that I relived Emily's life in my mind in order to understand my own life as an American poet as well as hers. She was born of white Anglo-Saxon rural aristocracy in a small village in Massachusetts, in the 19th century, and I come from Greek-Albanian-Italian and Polish-Russian-Jewish immigrants, and was born in the 20th century, but we're both American women poets of a liberal and rebellious bent. Dickinson was a transcendentalist rebelling against the Puritans, and she made poetry her means of worshipping nature and all creation. I'm a progressive eco-feminist humanist, a Free Thinker, as I believe Dickinson was for her time. She was a "Lover of Science and Scientist in Dark Days of the Republic," as I call her in my non-fiction afterword to Wild Nights, Wild Nights. Knowing her story makes her poetry more accessible to me, and I am enamored of studying the truth of science, too. I feel her frustration, her passion, and empathize with it, but that is what good poets do, create empathy. I was unable to get her likely affair with William Clark Smith out of my head. Why she took over my mind and imagination so, perhaps has to do with that inexplicable Mp3 file playing out of my laptop all by itself in the Emily Dickinson Room at Wellspring Writers' Retreat in Ashfield, birthplace of Will Clark, just after my visit to the Dickinson Museum in Amherst. I felt compelled to write about her with the realization of Ruth Owen Jones's discovery of her mysterious "Master" figure. I believe, after much research into Dickinson's life and texts that Jones is correct. I hope I've created a little additional empathy for the truth of the poet's life and the profound meanings in her poetry, her love of science over religious dogma that is an important theme for our time when creationists are again attempting to deny the truth of Darwinism. To tell a finer truth about this iconic American woman poet was my mission. END NOTES: The nonfiction afterword, LOVER OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIST IN DARK DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC: SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF EMILY DICKINSON'S 'MASTER FIGURE' 'NEIGHBOR AND FRIEND AND BRIDEGROOM .'" was first pub. in the CHELSEA LIT. REV. 81 (2006): 109-41. THE WELLSPRING WRITERS RETREAT in Ashfield, MA hosts writers and artists. As well, Ashfield is the historical birthplace of William Smith Clark. "The Sea Hag in the Cave of Sleep" is pub. in Gioseffi's EGGS IN THE LAKE, fwd. by John Logan, Brockport, NY: BOA Ed., 1979, 46-50. Located in Manhattan, NY. THE POETRY WALK ACROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE is now annually hosted by Poets House. For more information on the Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens, visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/. Jones's article was pub. in THE EMILY DICKINSON JOUR., 11.2 (2002): 48-85 Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith edited OPEN ME CAREFULLY: EMILY DICKINSON'S INTIMATE LETTERS TO SUSAN HUNTINGTON DICKINSON (Ashfield, MA: Paris P, 1998). Thomas Gilbert "Gib" Dickinson died in 1883. For more information on Austin's affair with Mabel Loomis Todd, see Polly Longworth's AUSTIN AND MABEL: THE AMHERST AFFAIR AND LOVE LETTERS OF AUSTIN DICKINSON AND MABEL LOOMIS TODD (Amherst, MA: U of MA P, 1984). At the U of MA, Jones had ready access to Clark's papers because he was founder and first acting president of the university. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1993. Boston: Harvard UP, 1998. New York: Modern Lib., 2002. New York: Norton, 1990. Vivian R. Pollack, ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 2004). R. W. Franklin, ed. (Amherst, MA: Amherst College P, 1986). THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: (CambriDGe, MA: Belknap/Harvard UP, 2003). Berkley: North Atlantic Books, 1985. New York: Penguin, 2008. |