Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Staff Review by Jack Edson
I had always wondered how my favorite poems by an American poet could have been written by a sad reclusive woman, dressed in white, standing in the upper story of a New England family home. Where did the author ever find the spark, the fire, which could ignite my emotions today, with just a few lines written one hundred and fifty years ago? We find the answer to this question (well, possibly the answer) when we read of the astonishingly wild adventures and the many secret loves of Emily Dickinson, the belle of Amherst, in the wonderful new novel, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn.
To make a long story short, we learn that Emily Dickinson was man-crazy. Naturally it began with her father, Edward Dickinson, who served as a congressman and had certain typical attitudes about what was improper for a woman, even if she might grow to become a poet of great genius. As a teenager, Emily attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and her boy-craziness blossomed in earnest when she caught a glimpse of Tom, the school’s blonde handyman, who later became a thief.
It is known that there were a number of male “mentors” throughout Dickinson’s life including the clergyman Thomas Wentworth Higginson and her father’s elderly friend, Judge Otis Lord, who proposed marriage to her late in life. Those relationships seem proper enough, but what about the handyman-thief and what about a certain night Dickinson spent in a gin-joint? Or, what about the night she left home, against her father’s orders, and waited in a train station for a man so that they might elope?
Throughout the book, the reader will be shocked and delighted at Emily’s actions. We forgive her irrational and risky behavior because she has given us so much in her writing and maybe because we want to see her happy and loved by someone, just as we love her today.
This book is full of touching moments and humor. It sketches a delightful portrait of a wonderful poet and it does give a plausible reason for the emotional spark in Emily Dickinson’s work.
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