This post was supposed to go up on Halloween, but let’s settle for Day of the Dead. In short, I’m preparing to teach another Creative Retirement Institute course on Emily Dickinson, this one titled “Emily Dickinson and the Mystery of the 40 Fascicles,” which to my mind has a nice Arabian Nights or maybe Nancy Drew vibe to it. As you might guess, one of our objects will be to discuss the poems in the context of the fascicles, including this poem, “One need not be a chamber – to be Haunted – ” which is found in Fascicle Twenty.

Read to the end of the post (or skip down there) to see more information about the course.

One need not be a chamber – to be Haunted –
One need not be a House –
The Brain – has Corridors surpassing
Material Place –                                              Corporeal [Place – ]

Far safer of a Midnight – meeting
Eternal Ghost –
Than an Interior – confronting –
That cooler – Host –                                       That Whiter Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey – gallop –
The Stones a’ chase –
Than moonless – One’s A’self encounter –
In lonesome place –

Ourself – behind Ourself – Concealed –
Should startle – most –
Assassin – hid in Our Apartment –
Be Horror’s least –

The Prudent – carries a Revolver –                The Body [carries] the
He bolts the Door –
O’erlooking a Superior Spectre –
More near –

—Emily Dickinson,  c. Autumn 1862

(Miller, p. 217)

You can listen to me read our haunted poem here:

I want to fill in some background for where my ideas for this course originated.

from emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Two years ago, I was invited to audit Professor Cristanne Miller’s U of Buffalo graduate seminar focusing on the, at that time, not-yet-released Letters of Emily Dickinson—the first new edition in 70 years, much needed—edited by Miller and Domnhall Mitchell.

I attended the class via Zoom, of course, and my anonymity allowed me to resist buying one more edition of Dickinson’s poems. I got by with Thomas H. Johnson’s 1971 one-volume Selected Letters, his 1961 one-volume Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Franklin’s 1999 reader’s edition, The Poems of Emily Dickinson. All of which were already on my big shelf of Dickinson books. After the seminar ended, convinced of their necessity, I bought both the poems and the letters.

I want to emphasize this: An important feature of Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, also edited by Miller, is contained in the subtitle. We can, finally, in a one-volume, reader’s edition, see Dickinson’s fascicles, the little booklets into which she arranged her poems from 1858 to 1865. Dickinson’s variant words, too (see margin notes) are included in this edition.

After these gorgeous new editions sat on my shelf for several months, it occurred to me that I might actually read them.

From there I conceived of a project called “My Year of Reading Dickinson.” Last November, before my year officially began, I told my friend, poet and scholar Jayne Marek, that I had no idea what it should look like. Though I hoped to share the project in some fashion, it felt lumpy and shapeless. Jayne suggested that I just put my boots on and get started. “Read for a few months or the whole year, then decide what it is.”

As you know, this past year a bunch of other stuff took over much space in my haunted brain, but even on the absolute worst days, I have picked up the letters and read a page or two, and I have read at least a few poems—usually more. Because I get up at dark-thirty and my husband rises at 8:00, I had time for this. (More than once I’ve awakened at midnight, realized I hadn’t done my pages, and got out of bed to do so.) I can now report that I’ve finished both volumes, and am circling back to reread and make more notes.

Speaking of that long shelf of books about E. D., I have also tried to keep a biography or critical work going on the side. And I have shared a little. Last winter’s Creative Retirement Institute course on Dickinson, for instance. I will share more, though I’m still not sure what that sharing will look like. Blog posts? A new blog, dedicated to Dickinson? Or will I venture into the Substack world? For now, I’ll be pouring a lot into the class, and mining the discussion for possibilities.

So all that blather, only to circle back to the beginning of the post. I’d love to see you join us for the CRI course. It’s on Zoom and runs 4 Tuesdays, 2 hours per class, beginning November 18. Jump straight to the course from the above link, or check out CRI’s catalog here.