Emily Dickinson Love Quotes

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If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.
Emily Dickinson
Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
Emily Dickinson
The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care
Emily Dickinson
Heart, we will forget him, You and I, tonight! You must forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.
Emily Dickinson
The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee...
Emily Dickinson
Till I loved I never lived.
Emily Dickinson
Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.
Emily Dickinson
Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured.
Emily Dickinson
That I shall love always, I argue thee that love is life, and life hath immortality
Emily Dickinson
Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
We outgrow love like other things and put it in a drawer, till it an antique fashion shows like costumes grandsires wore.
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall, I'd brush the summer by, With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
My love for those I love -- not many -- not very many, but don't I love them so?
Emily Dickinson
That love is all there is, Is all we know of love.
Emily Dickinson
To see her is a picture— To hear her is a tune— To know her an Intemperance As innocent as June— To know her not—Affliction— To own her for a Friend A warmth as near as if the Sun Were shining in your Hand.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself.
Emily Dickinson
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
Emily Dickinson
I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still.
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you’re lagging, I may remember him!
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
Love is its own rescue; for we, at our supremest, are but its trembling emblems.
Emily Dickinson
I HIDE myself within my flower That wearing on your breast, You, unsuspecting, wear me too— And angels know the rest. I hide myself within my flower, That, fading from your vase, You, unsuspecting, feel for me Almost a loneliness...
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
Till I loved I never liked enough.
Emily Dickinson
That Love is all there is Is all we know of Love, It is enough, the freight should be Proportioned to the groove.
Emily Dickinson
I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, Eyes; I wonder if It weighs like Mine, Or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long, Or did it just begin? I could not tell the Date of Mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live, And if They have to try, And whether, could They choose between, It would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long -- At length, renew their smile. An imitation of a Light That has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled, Some Thousands -- on the Harm Of early hurt -- if such a lapse Could give them any Balm; Or would they go on aching still Through Centuries above, Enlightened to a larger Pain By Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told; The reason deeper lies, -- Death is but one and comes but once, And only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, -- A sort they call "Despair"; There's Banishment from native Eyes, In sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kind Correctly, yet to me A piercing Comfort it affords In passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the Cross, And how they're mostly worn, Still fascinated to presume That Some are like My Own.
Emily Dickinson (I'm Nobody! Who Are You? (Scholastic Classics))
The bustle in a house The morning after death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon earth,-- The sweeping up the heart, And putting love away We shall not want to use again Until eternity
Emily Dickinson
Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.
Billy Collins (Picnic, Lightning)
Who loves you most, and loves you best, and thinks of you when others rest? 'Tis Emilie.
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest, Her heart is fit for home- I- a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest.
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldn’t sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs. Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensuality’s skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sun’s rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot. Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is? It is spring now, and Sensuality is very much in love these days. Her new friend is very sweet. Climbing into bed the first time, he confessed he was a little intimidated about making love with her. Sensuality just laughed and said, ‘But we’ve been making love for days.
J. Ruth Gendler (The Book of Qualities)
Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.
Emily Dickinson
Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to min, His furniture is love.
Emily Dickinson
I would have drowned twice to save you sinking, dear.
Emily Dickinson
I miss you, mourn for you, and walk the streets alone- often at night, beside, I fall asleep in tears, for your dear face, yet not one word comes back to me. If it is finished, tell me, and I will raise the lid to my box of Phantoms, and lay one more love in; but if it lives and beats still, still lives and beats for me, then say so, and I will strike the strings to one more strain of happiness before I die.
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly? The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring ,Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again, And who will call the wild-briar fair? Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now, And deck thee with holly's sheen, That, when December blights thy brow, He still may leave thy garland green.
Emily Dickinson
Love is Immortality.
Emily Dickinson
To wait an Hour—is long— If Love be just beyond— To wait Eternity—is short— If Love reward the end—
Emily Dickinson
Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured. —EMILY DICKINSON
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me,-- The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me!
Emily Dickinson
Love can do all but raise the Dead I doubt if even that From such a giant were withheld Were flesh equivalent But love is tired and must sleep, And hungry and must graze And so abets the shining Fleet Till it is out of gaze.
Emily Dickinson
I suppose that having lost true love once, I never wanted to replace it with a lukewarm approximation that would only serve to make me remember it forever.
Paola Kaufmann (The Sister: A Novel of Emily Dickinson)
Oh Susie, I often think that I will try to tell you how very dear you are, and how I'm watching for you, but the words won't come, though the tears will, and I sit down disappointed. Yet, darling, you know it all-- then why do I seek to tell you? I do not know. In thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain myself up there so I won't injure you.
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
I sing to use the waiting, My bonnet but to tie, And shut the door unto my house; No more to do have I, Till, his best step approaching, We journey to the day, And tell each other how we sang To keep the dark away.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
At some level, all love is combat, a wrestling with ghosts.
Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene))
I SEE thee better in the dark, I do not need a light. The love of thee a prism be Excelling violet. I see thee better for the years That hunch themselves between, The miner’s lamp sufficient be To nullify the mine. And in the grave I see thee best— Its little panels be A-glow, all ruddy with the light I held so high for thee! What need of day to those whose dark Hath so surpassing sun, It seem it be continually At the meridian?
Emily Dickinson
How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel-- how much more near and dear to sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of your voice...Give me strength, Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that endure...
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
To lose the approbation of my dog is a thing too horrible to contemplate.
Barbara Dana (A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson)
I love the cause that slew me
Emily Dickinson
They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars, Like petals from a rose, When suddenly across the lune A wind with fingers goes. They perished in the seamless grass, No eye could find the place; But God on his repealless list Can summon every face
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the Fall, I'd brush the Summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As Housewives do a Fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls — And put them each in separate Drawers, For fear the numbers fuse — If only Centuries, delayed, I'd count them on my Hand, Subtracting, till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen's land. If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I ’d toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity. But, now, uncertain of the length Of this, that is between, It goads me, like the Goblin Bee, That will not state — its sting.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias. -James (from "Descendants of the Eminent")
Tim Cummings
Did the harebell loose her girdle To the lover bee, Would the bee the harebell hallow Much as formerly?
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
When the Best is gone - I know that other things are not of consequence - The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care -
Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson: Letters)
I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away --
Emily Dickinson
Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself.
Emily Dickinson
The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide, Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
After you went, a low wind warbled through the house like a spacious bird, making it high but lonely. When you had gone the love came. I supposed it would. The supper of the heart is when the guest has gone.
Emily Dickinson
Mr. O'Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. "Ms. Auerbach! What will it be today? Camus? Cervantes?" "Actually I'm looking for a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson" He paused somberly, toying with the twirled tip of his mustache. No matter how seriously librarians are engaged in their work, they are always glad to be interrupted when the theme is books. It makes no difference to them how simple the search is or how behind on time either of you might be running - they consider all queries scrupulously. They love to have their knowledge tested. They lie in wait, they will not be rushed.
Hilary Thayer Hamann (Anthropology of an American Girl)
Lest Love should value less What loss would value more, Had it the stricken privilege --- It cherishes before.
Emily Dickinson
Summer-we all have seen- A few of us-believed- A few the more aspiring Unquestionably loves... .
Emily Dickinson
Unable are the Loved to die, For Love is Immortality … EMILY DICKINSON
Kerstin Gier (Emerald Green (Precious Stone Trilogy, #3))
Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality,” Jet said, quoting Emily Dickinson.
Alice Hoffman (The Rules of Magic)
Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality
Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers,’ the lovely Miss Emily Dickinson once wrote. Well, if that’s the case, then a wish is the thing with black feathers.
Meg Shaffer (The Wishing Game)
The small heart cannot break. The ecstasy of its penalty solaces the large.
Emily Dickinson
Your poetry--it doesn't deserve to be locked away, hidden from the rest of the world. And neither do you.
Tessa Emily Hall (Unwritten Melody)
That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love…. —Emily Dickinson
Dean Koontz (The Husband)
For love is immortality.
Emily Dickinson
Proud of my broken heart since thou didst Break it, Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee
Emily Dickinson
That love is all there is; is all we know of love. It is enough; the freight should be proportioned to the groove.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
The Daisy follows soft the Sun— And when his golden walk is done— Sits shyly at his feet— He—waking—finds the flower there— Wherefore—Marauder—art thou here? Because, Sir, love is sweet! We are the flower—Thou the Sun! Forgive us, if as days decline— We nearer steal to thee! Enamored of the parting West— The peace—the flight—the Amethyst— Night's possibility!
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love
Emily Dickinson
Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow.
Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
Books become my refuge. Reading keeps me hopeful. I fall in love with small poems, the shorter the better- haiku from Japan, and tiny rhymes by Emily Dickinson.
Margarita Engle (Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings)
You left me - Sire - two Legacies A Legacy of Love A Heavenly Father Had He the offer of - You left me Boundaries of Pain - Capacious as the Sea - Between Eternity and Time - Your Consciousness - and Me -
Emily Dickinson
...Dearer you cannot be, for I love you so already, that it almost breaks my heart - perhaps I can love you anew, every day of my life, every morning and evening - oh, if you will let me, how happy I shall be!
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
You left me, sweet, two legacies, A legacy of love A Heavenly Father would content, Had He the offer of; You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me.
Emily Dickinson
Oh Susie, I would nestle close to your warm heart, and never hear the wind blow, or the storm beat, again. Is there any room there for me, or shall I wander away all homeless and alone? Thank you for loving me, darling...
Emily Dickinson (Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press))
BEQUEST. You left me, sweet, two legacies, — A legacy of love A Heavenly Father would content, Had He the offer of; You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me.
Emily Dickinson (The Collected Works of EMILY DICKINSON: The Complete Works PergamonMedia)
I had no time to hate, because The grave would hinder me, And life was not so ample I Could finish enmity. Nor had I time to love ; but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought, Was large enough for me.
Emily Dickinson
Love not me for comely grace, For my pleasing eye or face; Nor for any outward part, No, nor for my constant heart: For those may fail or turn to ill, So thou and I shall sever. Keep therefore a true woman's eye, And love me still, but know not why; So hast thou the same reason still To doat upon me ever.
Emily Dickinson (Love Poems: English Language Classics)
I only know that when you shall come back again, the Earth will seem more beautiful, and bigger than it does now, and the blue sky from the window will be all dotted with gold -- though it may not be evening, or time for the stars to come.
Emily Dickinson
She (Emily Dickinson) loved simplicity, and perhaps withdrrew into seclusion because it was the simplest way of doing what she wanted to do; express her ideas and thoughts in poetry which no one whom she knew would understand. This was as natural to her as breathing, but the pretense of the people around her seemed unnatural.
Tasha Tudor (The New England Butt'ry Shelf Cookbook: Receipts for Very Special Occasions)
Love's stricken "why" Is all that love can speak— Built of but just a syllable, The hugest hearts that break.
Emily Dickinson
Come with me this morning to the church within our hearts, where the bells are always ringing, and the preacher whose name is love — shall intercede for us!
Emily Dickinson
And I, could I stand by And see you freeze, Without my right of frost, Death's privilege?
Emily Dickinson
At some level, all love is combat, a wrestling with ghosts. We are only for something by being against something else. People who believe they are having pleasant, casual, uncomplex sexual encounters, whether with friend, spouse, or stranger are blocking from consciousness the tangle of psychodynamics at work, just as they block the hostile clashings of their dream life.
Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene))
How glad I am that spring has come, and how it calms my mind when wearied with study to walk out in the green fields and beside the pleasant streams in which South Hadley is rich! ... The older I grow, the more do I love spring and spring flowers. Is it not so with you? (May 16, 1848 to Abiah Root)
Emily Dickinson
Dich hab ich nicht erreicht- Doch nähert Tag für Tag Sich dir mein Fuß Drei Flüsse noch und ein Berg Ich überqueren muss. Noch Eine Wüste, noch ein Meer, Die Reise aber zähl ich nicht, Wenn ich dann vor Dir steh. Wir schreiten leicht, wie Schnee wir stehen, die Wasser murmeln leis. Flüsse, Wüsten, Berg und Meer sind von uns durchlaufen. Doch Tod entreißt mir meinen Preis, Dich schauend, er gewinnt.
Emily Dickinson
Why Do I Love You. Sir? 'Why do I love'You. Sir? Because- The Wind does not require the Grass To answer-Wherefore when He pass She cannot keep Her place. Because He knows-and Do not You- And We know not- Enough for Us The wisdom it be so- The Lightning-never asked an Eye Wherefore it struck-when He was by Because He knows it cannot speak- And reason not contained- -Of Talk- There he preferred by Daintier Folk- The Sunrise-Sir-compelleth Me- Because He's Sunrise-and I see- Therefore-Then- I love Thee-
Emily Dickinson
MY worthiness is all my doubt, His merit all my fear, Contrasting which, my qualities Do lowlier appear; Lest I should insufficient prove 5 For his beloved need, The chiefest apprehension Within my loving creed. So I, the undivine abode Of his elect content, 10 Conform my soul as ’t were a church Unto her sacrament.
Emily Dickinson
I did not reach thee, But my feet slip nearer every day; Three Rivers and a Hill to cross, One Desert and a Sea— I shall not count the journey one When I am telling thee. Two deserts—but the year is cold So that will help the sand— One desert crossed, the second one Will feel as cool as land. Sahara is too little price To pay for thy Right hand! The sea comes last. Step merry, feet! So short have we to go To play together we are prone, But we must labor now, The last shall be the lightest load That we have had to draw. The Sun goes crooked—that is night— Before he makes the bend We must have passed the middle sea, Almost we wish the end Were further off—too great it seems So near the Whole to stand. We step like plush, we stand like snow— The waters murmur now, Three rivers and the hill are passed, Two deserts and the sea! Now Death usurps my premium And gets the look at Thee.
Emily Dickinson
Herman Melville is not comforting. Emily Dickinson isn’t either. Maybe their work is too hungry for comfort, or just too vivid for comfort. But Henry James is – profoundly so. Because he is tender. The tenderness is there in the structure of the sentence. He knows the way the poor and the dead are forgotten by the living, and he cannot allow that to happen. So he keeps on writing for them, for the dead, as if they were children to be sheltered and loved, never abandoned.
Susan Howe
LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose — just a throne.
Emily Dickinson (Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete)
If I dismiss the ordinary — waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen — I may just miss my life… To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend rereading Chekhov stories—to know that we are doing what we’re supposed to be doing — is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives. The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don’t know why, and yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring.
Dani Shapiro (Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life)
But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive. No longer young, no longer pretty, no longer loved, or sweet, or lovable, unmasked, writhing on the ground for all to see in my utter ingloriousness, there’s no telling what I might do. I could film my anger and sell it, I could do some unmasking of my own, beat the fuckers at their own game, and on the way I could become the best-known fucking artist in America, out of sheer spite. You never know. I’m angry enough to set fire to a house just by looking at it. It can’t be contained, stored away with the recycling. I’m done staying quietly upstairs. My anger is not a little person’s, a sweet girl’s, a dutiful daughter’s. My anger is prodigious. My anger is a colossus. I’m angry enough to understand why Emily Dickinson shut out the world altogether, why Alice Neel betrayed her children, even though she loved them mightily. I’m angry enough to see why you walk into the water with rocks in your pockets, even though that’s not the kind of angry I am. Virginia Woolf, in her rage, stopped being afraid of death; but I’m angry enough, at last, to stop being afraid of life, and angry enough—finally, God willing, with my mother’s anger also on my shoulders, a great boil of rage like the sun’s fire in me—before I die to fucking well live. Just watch me.
Claire Messud (The Woman Upstairs)
They call each other ‘E.’ Elvis picks wildflowers near the river and brings them to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him. In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sports Levis and western blouses with rhinestones. Elvis is lean again, wears baggy trousers and T-shirts, a letterman’s jacket from Tupelo High. They take long walks and often hold hands. She prefers they remain just friends. Forever. Emily’s poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs, Electricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and Richard Nixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile. Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoon he will play guitar and sing “I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed” to the tune of “Love Me Tender.” Emily will clap and harmonize. Alone in their cabins later, they’ll listen to the river and nap. They will not think of Amherst or Las Vegas. They know why God made them roommates. It’s because America was their hometown. It’s because God is a thing without feathers. It’s because God wears blue suede shoes.
Hans Ostrom
Dream Song 187 Them lady poets must not marry, pal. Miss Dickinson—fancy in Amherst bedding hér. Fancy a lark with Sappho, a tumble in the bushes with Miss Moore, a spoon with Emily, while Charlotte glare. Miss Bishop’s too noble-O. That was the lot. And two of them are here as yet, and—and: Sylvia Plath is not. She—she her credentials has handed in, leaving alone two tots and widower to what he makes of it— surviving guy, & when Tolstoy’s pathetic widow doing her whung (after them decades of marriage) & kids, she decided he was queer & loving his agent. Wherefore he rush off, leaving two journals, & die. It is a true error to marry with poets or to be by them.
John Berryman
At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians’ and Emily Dickinson’s dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn’t meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neighbors came to call and to float notes down on them.14 Various theories have been advanced for her self-imposed hermitude, including Bright’s Disease, an unhappy love affair, eye trouble, and bad skin. T. L. Mensa suggests the simpler theory that all the rest of the Amherstonians were morons.15 None of these explanations would have made it likely that she would like Martians any better than Amherstates, and there is the added difficulty that, having died in 1886, she would also have been badly decomposed.
Connie Willis (The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories)
Of course one’s sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one’s class, race, gender, and sexual identification. … But [regarding] national character …, aside from references to a national aesthetic — literary, musical, and choreographic, there are two poles I reference: minimalist and maximalist. I love them both — the cryptic poems of Emily Dickinson folded up in tiny packets and hidden away in a box, the sparse, understated choreographies of Merce; but also the “trashy, profane and obscene” poems of Whitman and Ginsberg, [and] Martha Graham’s expressionism. I am, myself, a minimalist. But I love distortion guitar and the wild exhibitionism of so many American artists. Also, these divisions are false. Emily Dickinson, in fact, can be as trashy and obscene as the best of them! Anyway, Dickinson and Whitman are at the heart of this narrative. They are the Dancing Queen and the Guitar Hero.
Barbara Browning
But since we’re on the topic of identity and narrative voice - here’s an interesting conundrum. You may know that The Correspondence Artist won a Lambda Award. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation, and I was thrilled to win a Lammy. My book won in the category of “Bisexual Fiction.” The Awards (or nearly all of them) are categorized according to the sexual identity of the dominant character in a work of fiction, not the author. I’m not sure if “dominant” is the word they use, but you get the idea. The foregrounded character. In The Correspondence Artist, the narrator is a woman, but you’re never sure about the gender of her lover. You’re also never sure about the lover’s age or ethnicity - these things change too, and pretty dramatically. Also, sometimes when the narrator corresponds with her lover by email, she (the narrator) makes reference to her “hard on.” That is, part of her erotic play with her lover has to do with destabilizing the ways she refers to her own sex (by which I mean both gender and naughty bits). So really, the narrator and her lover are only verifiably “bisexual” in the Freudian sense of the term - that is, it’s unclear if they have sex with people of the same sex, but they each have a complex gender identity that shifts over time. Looking at the various possible categorizations for that book, I think “Bisexual Fiction” was the most appropriate, but better, of course, would have been “Queer Fiction.” Maybe even trans, though surely that would have raised some hackles. So, I just submitted I’m Trying to Reach You for this year’s Lambda Awards and I had to choose a category. Well. As I said, the narrator identifies as a gay man. I guess you’d say the primary erotic relationship is with his boyfriend, Sven. But he has an obsession with a weird middle-aged white lady dancer on YouTube who happens to be me, and ultimately you come to understand that she is involved in an erotic relationship with a lesbian electric guitarist. And this romance isn’t just a titillating spectacle for a voyeuristic narrator: it turns out to be the founding myth of our national poetics! They are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman! Sorry for all the spoilers. I never mind spoilers because I never read for plot. Maybe the editor (hello Emily) will want to head plot-sensitive readers off at the pass if you publish this paragraph. Anyway, the question then is: does authorial self-referentiality matter? Does the national mythos matter? Is this a work of Bisexual or Lesbian Fiction? Is Walt trans? I ended up submitting the book as Gay (Male) Fiction. The administrator of the prizes also thought this was appropriate, since Gray is the narrator. And Gray is not me, but also not not me, just as Emily Dickinson is not me but also not not me, and Walt Whitman is not my lover but also not not my lover. Again, it’s a really queer book, but the point is kind of to trip you up about what you thought you knew about gender anyway.
Barbara Browning