The page is Emily Dickinson’s stage, backstage, theater open 24/7. Dickinson dresses up, dons costume, makes herself up, for the role as immortal poet. And so she sets the stage for the drama of her life: how to convert being a nobody to celebrity Nobody–suspense, acts, gestures, stage whispers, asides, climax. If it’s drama, it must mean she is the star, the lead, a hero! Well played, Emily. Lights! Mic! Mount the proscenium. Action! You bow? We bow to you, O Queen.
Imagine you and me, I do: and Emily Dickinson did:
Me–come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me–hear! My foreign Ear
The sounds of Welcome–there!
. . .
My holiday, shall be
That They remember me–
My Paradise–the fame
That They–pronounce my name—(Johnson, P. 431)
That’s the Turtles, imagining me and you, happy together, and that’s Emily Dickinson, imagining us: we’re a vision of hers—a shy “nobody†but imagining coming to us here, the sounds of welcome, as we remember her and pronounce her name on our show today. This is Professor Barbara Mossberg, imagining me and you at our shining place, The Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM, and maybe we’re a vision of Paul Simon–slow down, you move too fast. We’re slowing down to celebrate lives, that’s the vision, and on the subject of birthdays and how we live, Emily Dickinson said, “lest any doubt that we are glad that they are born today.†This is the birthday week of Emily Dickinson, December 10, there’s no doubt about being glad she was born, so we’ll take this up in our third annual Dickinson celebration show, celebrating the phenomenon that someone so many years ago, alone in her room, unknown, unasked, unwanted, picked up a pen and wrote a poem, poem after poem, night after night, creating a scene over her identity, and in the captivating process, made an immortal life, and changed mine, and perhaps yours, because she lived and wrote. As we celebrate birthdays of “glorious luminaries†William Blake and Joyce Cary (and his invention Gulley Jimson), Walt Whitman claims his due on principle (celebrations and songs: count him in). Unrecognized fully (or at all) in their own lives in their time, they create their own immortal fates, by persisting in visions of what they are, their voices singing in our lives, and trusting us to hear. In their artful lives, we hear expressed the universal conviction in each person of something precious and vital to contribute to our world. Hear hear!
c Barbara Mossberg 2010
