So that, while Dickinson's dance of intensity, tension,
and ecstasy is what we celebrate,
we must also admire her sense of simple endurance.
That white sustenance she invokes with amazing strength,
as well as in one of her late poems,
"1,762," where she believes Elysium is there
in a near room, but all we can do is wait for signs.
What fortitude the soul contains,
that it can so endure the accent of a coming foot, the opening
of a door.
Emily Dickinson's accents are her dance,
her doors open, our doors to wonders.
I've tried to think of her dance in terms
of linguistic movement, its partnership with images
and place, with her conception of self, with the lover,
and with God or the infinite.
But finally, it is the dance of a life in words.
It is a dance we all share.
I hope you can learn from how she steps it out with wildness,
with exactitude, and with courage.
[APPLAUSE]