Under the Dickinson
bust an index card on which Remember, poetry ... is scribbled in red ink. Notebook in hand, back straight, mind alert, I start reading her last
manuscript, Behind /Beyond the Attic Wall.
the year
dying in the night
I alone
lean out the window
into the dark
Emily Dickinson once defined poetry this way: “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 way I know it. Is there any other way?” (L342a, 1870)
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