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I want to read a poem
about Emily Dickinson.

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You heard her name
mentioned in the movie.

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And I have always been
fascinated by her,

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as is everyone.

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And she still has
ultimate mysteries

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nobody can figure out.

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So I would like to read
the poem first, and then

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read a little comment about it.

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I tried to mix things up and
make it even more confusing.

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This is my version
of "Emily Dickinson."

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One.

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He saw a laughing girl.

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And she said to him, I must
take a man toward eternity.

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Her flesh was soft and fleet.

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Her mouth was like a pose.

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And a spiritual drift played
about her flowing clothes.

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She said she could not be
an evidence of the free

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unless she left her body
to become immortality.

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She took him in the main
and held him in a trance.

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Who never knew for
30 years whether she

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was the dancer or the dance.

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Two.

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She was the highest mark
to which he set a snare.

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He held her in his clutch,
but she vanished in the air.

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She departed with the years
and rode upon her destiny,

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while he was retained much
in the hold of mystery.

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Now he must forswear
the royal of reality,

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and must admit the truth
of what he cannot see.

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She is gone with the wind and
he is gone with the weather.

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Only in spirituality can
they be said to be together.

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Pretend to the flesh, but
the flesh will fall away.

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In timeless uselessness
love can have a stay.

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He thought he held her
when passion was high.

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Time brings her to him
in a wind drawn sigh.

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And here's a note
I wrote in a book

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where this poem was
published a year or so ago.

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The nearest I came to
Emily in a special sense,

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was by an unexpected laying
on of personal touch.

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I touched a man
who touched Emily.

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The man was Kendall Emerson, one
of the most charming and urbane

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of men, who was in his 80s
and died only a few years ago.

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For years after morning
service, on the coast

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of Maine in the summer, and the
proffer of a tipple of sherry,

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we had sometimes talked of
Emily's poetry, which he loved.

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But it was one time
after a good many years,

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that he talked of her
in a personal way.

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Mr. Emerson knew Emily
Dickinson in the last nine years

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of her life, and the
first nine of his.

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As a boy, he was a close friend
of Emily's nephew, Gilbert,

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who died as a boy and whom
she particularly loved,

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along with his young friend.

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After which, I assumed she
transferred her affection

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to him.

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She wrote him short poems
as on a Christmas occasion,

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surrounding them with flowers.

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Such mementos,
minus the flowers,

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are preserved at Amherst.

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He told me three things
about her which I remember.

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He said that she was a
good looking woman, which

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went against the notion
I and probably many

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have had that she
was plain looking.

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He said she always wore
white, which everyone

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know corroborating this.

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And he said, and
I pass it along,

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with the verve he
felt in recounting it

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about three-quarters
of a century

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later, that she made
very good donuts.

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[LAUGHTER]

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If you would look in the
indices of several books

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about Emily Dickinson
written in the last 10 years,

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you will find references
to Kendall Emerson.

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She touched him.

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He touched me.

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