Emily Dickinson

ME:
I’m very grateful to have been given this opportunity to “speak “ to you Miss Dickinson, I pondered a while on how to make an approach to you knowing you were a very private person, and did not like to venture too far from your home. So I gave this a great deal of thought and my friend Hugh gave me a poetic nudge.

EMILY:
“How do most people live without any thought? There are many people in the world,--you must have noticed them in the street,--how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning? I felt it shelter to speak to you.”

ME:
Well, thank you very much, I’m very grateful that you have. I promise not to be too long but based on your life’s writings I’m sure you have a few opinions and truths to share.

EMILY:
“Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.”

ME:
Hmmm, that certainly makes sense to me.You were known as a very private poet, it is said you wrote nearly 1800 poems but fewer than a dozen were published during your lifetime…tell me why those pieces that were published were usually significantly altered by the publishers?

EMILY:
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate; behaviour is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes. I don't profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense. Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it.

ME:
I find your poetry quite beautiful but only reached that conclusion after reading it several times – I think it’s because of the era and how people spoke in those times – but once I’d reasonably mastered that I really settled down to read you – I was totally won over and have become another huge fan of your poetry.

EMILY:
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon - poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these. If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

ME:
When you put it like that I have to agree. The one thing I’ve come to learn and be grateful for is to be touched by the wisdom of brilliant writer/poets whose lives I have obsessively researched for no other reason than to feel what it’s like to bask forever in the sweet glow of their greatness.

EMILY:
Forever is composed of nows, I dwell in possibility - saying nothing sometimes says the most - My best acquaintances are those with whom I spoke no word.

ME:
May I ask you to leave me with just one, small gem to hold close to remember this short time we have spent together please?

EMILY:
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!”

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

ME:
Goodbye sweet poetess, I’ll never forget this, ever!!.

EMILYy:
I must go in, the fog is rising.