The World Writes Emily Dickinson Back

Recently I was asked the following question: if there was one quote I could put on a T-shirt -- and I would have to wear that T-shirt for the rest of my life...what would my quote be?

Immediately I thought of a place I'd been to a few years before which had a lasting effect on me. First you have to understand something: ever since I was a kid growing up in Texas, I'd loved, loved reading Emily Dickinson's very excellent poetry.

So when I finally got the chance to go, I was on a very serious mission: to visit Emily Dickinson. I had always wanted to go to the place she'd lived so I could see for myself this house, where the Emily I knew of from these poems I so loved, had actually lived and written most of her poetry.

What would it look like? Where would a poet like Emily write? Even though circumstances around the homestead had changed radically throughout the years, when she was inside this house (which had been preserved and made to appear as it did at the time when Emily lived there) what would she have seen?

When I arrived I was greeted by the tour guides along with everyone else; I then walked with a group of people through the rooms of the house where Emily had lived with her father and some other members of her immediate family up until the end of her life.

I looked for answers in the white dresses she had worn so often, which were hanging, untouchable, inside a large glass box. I read the newspaper framed on a single wall which contained one of the only poems published during her own lifetime, as most of her poetry she kept hidden on scraps in drawers. (Emily's poetry was later found in these drawers and published posthumously).

After being in her room: the place where she wrote her poems on a very simple wooden desk: on scraps of paper, on the backs of recipes and envelopes -- in handwriting which was sometimes written so quickly in a burst of brilliant thought or inspiration, that, later, when her poetry was discovered in these drawers, it was sometimes hard at first for others to read...I walked the same floorboards that Emily had once walked on, during a time in her life when she was writing poems which sometimes mentioned things like the sea: which she had never actually seen...yet poems that would forever be read, reread and remembered by the world, and also held dearly in the hearts of visitors like me.

As a visitor to the Dickinson's house, but living in today's world as it is now, I do not have to wear white dresses to "work" or: write. I usually wear a T-shirt and Jeans. For Emily, of course, wearing a T-shirt would not have been an option. In this multi-media, digital age, when -- not only can you design your own T-shirts from internet sites -- but you can just as easily quickly google and then immediately see endless images of the sea right on your live computer screen, I sometimes wonder what Emily Dickinson would have thought if she could instantly see the seas. I wonder how this age we live in might have affected her writing and her daily life. I try to imagine her using a cell phone instead of writing long, handwritten letters to friends who lived far away. I wonder how she would react if she were here now, and how she would interpret all the images she would see.

Today there are many video renditions of Emily's poetry on sites like Youtube...videos which constantly inspire me, and others like me, just like her books did and still do. And I halfway wish she were magically here somehow
for a moment or two, so the poet, Emily Dickinson, who once wrote "This is my letter to the World that never wrote to me" could see this response from the World. I also wonder sometimes what Emily might have thought about that.

As I left the Dickinson homestead, I entered a small gift shop, where, along with a couple of books, I purchased a T-shirt which is very important to me. The words from Emily Dickinson's beloved poem "hope is the thing with feathers" are written on it in a very appropriate font in a shade of hopeful bright blue. This is my favorite T-shirt, a relic, because of the words and what they mean. And it is the one -- the only T-shirt I would wear -- to answer the question which was posed to me.

The rest of the poem -- in a multimedia form -- you can see yourself by watching this video:





Emily also said "To fight aloud...is very brave." And when I think of Emily and the way that society has changed since her lifetime, my very best guess is that if Emily Dickinson were here today, she would encourage Girls everywhere to make their own way...to always remain brave, honorable, hopeful and true...to the poetry and creativity that runs through you -- every day.