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My Pilgrimage

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I am away from home—away from vacuum cleaners and dirty dishes and laundry and cats-needing-fed and all things routine. Let’s not call it a “trip” (even if it is trippy), but a pilgrimage: to Amherst, Massachusetts, to hang out with Emily Dickinson. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years and years, and never quite managed, until now.

On the first leg of my journey, my dissertation advisor and Dickinson scholar, Dr. Vivian Pollak, met me in Amherst. Vivian and I spent three days exploring together—visiting not only the Emily Dickinson Museum, but also Smith College (where Vivian attended about a year behind Sylvia Plath) and Chester (where a friend of the Dickinson family and correspondent of Dickinson, Joseph Lyman, was born). I also enjoyed sampling local restaurants with Vivian and her husband.

Emily’s iconic white dress and writing desk (in corner)

Emily Dickinson’s gravestone in West Cemetery, Amherst. All photos by B. Reid.

The Mount, Lenox, MA

On day four, when the Pollaks decamped for Boston, I headed west, to Pittsfield and Lenox. My aim was to tour the Berkshire home of Edith Wharton, The Mount (heady stuff). Although Herman Melville’s Arrowhead was closed, I also visited that property, walking around the house and grounds and trails, catching a view of Mt. Greylock, which is said to have played a role in the creation of Moby Dick (written at Arrowhead in “the bitter winter of 1850-1851.”)

Now I am back in Amherst, staying at a historic bed and breakfast and immersed in what I am defining as the writing-retreat phase of my pilgrimage. Thanks to Vivian, I had an hour alone in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, scribbling (with a pencil—no ink allowed!) madly. On the 11th, I have a two-hour group session in the same locale.

Today I am at Mt. Holyoke College, visiting their special collections. On Monday, I have an appointment to visit Amherst College’s Dickinson holdings.

I carted along a number of books, and thought I would catch up with blog-reviews on this trip, but some sort of magic seems to be underway and I find myself hard at work (or at play) with my own manuscript, making discoveries, figuring out what my new book of poems is about.

Thank you, spirit of Emily Dickinson.

I’ve done some exploring around Amherst, too, discovering that a number of writers have called Amherst home (including Robert Frost, who taught at Amherst College). I’ve also visited the Eric Carle Children’s Picture Book Museum (oh my!). And, on one of my long rambles, discovered a mill pond and a water fall, completely unexpected and magical. Like the whole trip.

I think this blog post has come out all a jumble, with the photos not staying where I placed them. But I’m exhausted! Thank you, for listening. Enjoy the photos!

You can explore Emily Dickinson’s home virtually at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/

To learn about Edith Wharton’s The Mount, hop over to this link: https://edithwharton.org/.

Herman Melville’s Arrowhead is included here: https://berkshirehistory.org/.

The Gorgeous Nothings

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Another book I’m reading—very, very slowly—is Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings, compiled and edited by Marta Werner and Jen Bervin. (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2013). The work of at least twenty years for the editors, these late fragments and drafts, scribbled on envelopes and the backs of letters, come to life in this edition, “itself a work of art,” as Susan Howe writes in the preface. It’s the next best thing to sitting in an archive and handling the actual materials that Dickinson touched.

I attended a sunrise service this morning, and standing on a beach at dawn made me think of Dickinson and her “gorgeous nothings.” It makes me happy to be able to share it with you.

Happy 195th Birthday, Emily Dickinson!

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My Creative Retirement Institute class on Emily Dickinson’s fascicles wrapped up yesterday. The beauty (and the weirdness) of it was that focusing on the fascicles made it impossible for me to turn the class into “all of Bethany’s favorite E. D. poems.” In each class I asked, “What caught your eye? What do you want to bring to our attention?” As a result, we put a microscope to poems I’ve barely given a glance in the past. And everything we picked up gave us so much to talk about. It was ideal.

Today I’m having my writing group here, at my house. I’ll bake Emily’s Coconut Cake, and we’ll drink sparkling water, and read poems to one another. What could be better?

https://revolutionarypie.com/2015/01/14/emily-dickinsons-coconut-cake/

Celebrations are popping up everywhere on the Web, but here are two that made their way to my in-box:

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s On Being newsletter: https://poetryunbound.substack.com/p/you-cannot-extinguish (my only quibble with his post is that he says Dickinson bound her fascicles to send to correspondents, and though she mailed many poems with letters, I don’t believe there’s evidence for the fascicles being shared). He describes her poems and letters as a tribute and reminder of what “a deep pursuit of a vocation can do.” True!

And of course the Emily Dickinson Museum—visit this site today to see all the hoopla (including a virtual program, which you, too, can join via their registration link): https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org

And, do I have favorite Dickinson poems? Oh, so many!

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
From Manzanilla come!

(Fascicle 12, Sheet 1, c. early 1861, Miller p. 135)

 

Tomorrow evening, Dec. 11, 2025, at 6 p.m., I’m one of three featured readers at It’s About Time in Ballard. You can expect me to talk a bit about Dickinson (just try to stop me!), and to share a handful of my Dickinson-inspired poems.

 

Emily Dickinson and the Mystery of the 40 Fascicles

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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.