About three weeks ago, I went to visit Amherst, Massachusetts,
and I was walking in the Main Street
looking for bookstores and fabric stores.
And I noticed the graveyard behind some of the stores.
And I walked over there, and I remember
that Emily Dickinson lived in Amherst
and was probably buried there.
So I went and I saw her grave and she's
right next to her sister Lavinia and right next to her father.
The interesting thing is, I've been in Amherst so many times,
and it never occurred to me that she'd be there.
She's one of my favorite poets.
And a couple of weeks before, I had just written a sestina
called "An Introduction to Emily Dickinson,"
which I'm going to read for you.
I'm not going to tell you which of the six repeating N-words
are.
See, if you can get them.
And what I wanted to do was start off almost
like a lecture in this poem.
And then, I started remembering all these little anecdotes
about Emily Dickinson that have to do with my own life.
So I thought I'll throw that stuff into because the hardest
thing about the sestina, since it's so long,
is how to keep it interesting.
So I figured a little gossip never hurts.
An introduction to ED.
In 1830, Emily Dickinson was born
into the paradise on Earth of Amherst, Massachusetts,
and rarely left its white circumference.
Out of 1,775 poems she wrote in her day, she saw only eight
of them published.
What an introduction to the literary world?
They were punctuated with dashes.
"Pure" and "terrible" is how she described her father's heart.
But Emily never married and never
had the heart to leave him.
Like an angel or nun inhabiting paradise,
a patron saint CF William Carlos Williams.
Emily dashed in and out of her heavenly garden
dressed in a white habit.
After reading the complete poems introduction,
its index of first lines, I counted
26 poems ending with "de."
My writer friend, Robert, worked as a caretaker
day and night in the Dickinson mansion, a beat
in the heart of Main Street.
Visiting poets needed no formal introduction or appointment.
They could casually enter the Paradise of Emily's living
room, French doors alternating with white marble fireplaces.
But no little desk where Emily dashed off
poems on brown paper bags.
Father's huge bed, the one dash of furniture
left in the house that had seen better days.
Robert camped out in his sleeping bag
with a copy of the White Goddess,
too worshipful to sleep upstairs.
Ate his heart out beneath Emily's bare bedroom
on this side of paradise.
Upstairs, he'd had headaches, blinded
by the sun's introduction.
Lori G sent me ED's cookbook, her Bible, whose introduction
proved it was genuine, no joke.
Hundreds of dashes and dots on its pages, a Morse code
of souls in paradise.
Emily's recipe for federal cake could
feed a dazed army of poets.
Now, so much butter stops the heart.
Can you imagine Emily up to her elbows in white flour,
10 cups of flour, and 21 cups of pulverized white sugar, five
eggs, half pint of milk added after the introduction
of butter?
This is not recommended for the faint-hearted baker
or poet whose batters know simple slapdash operation.
Roses and a federal loaf arrived one day at Mrs. Boltwoods'.
Some gifts are more hell than paradise.
It's true.
The terrified heart is no paradise lost.
Frightened white Emily greets Higginson, dashes
into his hand two day lilies.
These are my introduction.