Poetry Discussion Group, January 17, 2020

The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group meets monthly, September through May, for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. The Poetry Discussion Group meets at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, on the second floor of Amherst College’s Frost Library. Participants should proceed directly to the Library and do not need to stop at the Museum. While no RSVP is required, participants are invited to email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org to receive a list of poems for discussion. Attendees are welcome to bring a bag lunch. Beverages and a sweet snack are provided.

January Poetry Discussion Group will meet on January 17 2020 from 12pm to 2pm.

Dickinson and the Law

Lawyers and legal discourse surrounded the poet. Emily had three lawyers in her immediate family, a love interest who worked as her father’s law clerk, and another romantic relationship with an esteemed Salem judge. Naturally, she picked up on legal language and concepts—in particular, those of property interests, crime, and contractual obligations. Many of Emily’s legal references make us laugh, such as the spider squatting on her toilet in a case of adverse possession, or the dying speaker surrounded by friends and flies who has assigned all parts of her that were assignable. There are over a hundred legal terms in her work, and many more poems than we can “do justice to” in one sitting. We will muse together over some of the more humorous instances of legal words and concepts in her opus.

Facilitator: Jill Franks is a recovering attorney, previously licensed in the state of Massachusetts, who changed careers in 1987. While a lawyer, she had a general practice in Northampton and served also at Legal Services Offices, UMass, as an advocate for students. Starting in 1987, Jill studied English Literature, earning a PhD from Rutgers in 1992 and subsequently teaching at University of British Columbia and Austin Peay State University. She is the author of several monographs about literary figures and cinematic auteurs. Her most recent publication is a travel/literary book about her hike on the Coast to Coast trail of northern England (Every Stranger a God: Hiking the English Moors, available at Amazon). Jill guides at the Emily Dickinson Museum and appreciates the enthusiasm and scholarship of the Poetry Discussion Group.

Meeting Notes

Center of Humanistic Inquiry Address: 61 Quadrangle Dr, Amherst. This event will be held in the seminar room, the classroom on the left at the top of the stairs.
Parking – attendees may park in the Amherst College Alumni Lot and walk to the library free of charge. Metered parking is available closer to campus on the Town Common. Some select spots and accessible parking are available on campus, around the quad and behind the Frost Library. Participants with a state-issued handicap placard may park in any accessible spaces on campus. See the Amherst College campus parking map for more information.
Program cost – Drop-in fees are as follows: $12 for EDM Friends (Members); $15 for Non-Members.

“The World Writes Back: Postcards to Emily Dickinson,” 2019

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me –
The simple News that Nature told –
With tender Majesty

(Fr519)

When Emily Dickinson wrote her “letter to the World,” she wrote to a world “That never wrote to Me.” Now the world has the opportunity to write back! In honor of the poet’s birthday on December 10, 2019, the Emily Dickinson Museum invites you to contribute to the celebratory exhibit, “The World Writes Back: Postcards to Emily Dickinson.” Send us a postcard, and your work and words will be on display in the Homestead where Dickinson wrote almost all of her 1,789 poems!

How to participate:

Purchase or create an original postcard representing your corner of the world.
Write down some thoughts! You might share how you discovered Emily Dickinson, how you’ve been inspired by her life and work, and/or send us original poetry of your own! If you like, snap a photo of your postcard and share to social media using #PostcardstoEmily.
Mail your work to the Emily Dickinson Museum. Postcards received by December 10 will be included in the exhibit. Please mail postcards to:

Emily Dickinson Museum
280 Main Street
Amherst, MA 01002
Follow along on the Museum’s social media to see your work displayed in the Homestead! @EmilyDickinson.Museum on Instagram, @DickinsonMuseum on Twitter, and @Emily.Dickinson.Museum on Facebook. Or follow the hashtags #PostcardstoEmily and #TheWorldWritesBack.

Please note: Postcards will be displayed during family events. Please refrain from using explicit language or images. By sending us your postcard, you give the Emily Dickinson Museum the right to share your work in the exhibit and via social media. Please sign your card as you would like to be attributed.

Questions can be directed to edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

Lesley Dill to Receive This Year’s ‘Tell It Slant’ Award

THE EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM WILL AWARD THIS YEAR’S ‘TELL IT SLANT’ AWARD
TO ARTIST LESLEY DILL

The artist will receive the award at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute

(AMHERST, Mass., October 7, 2019) – Today the Emily Dickinson Museum announced the winner of the 2019 Tell It Slant Award. The award honors individuals whose work is imbued with the creative spirit of Emily Dickinson. This year’s recipient is Lesley Dill, a prominent American artist working at the intersection of language and fine art. Dill’s work has been exhibited around the world, and her art is in collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her opera based on Dickinson’s poems, Divide Light, was performed by New York’s New Camerata Opera Company in 2018.

The Tell It Slant Award, which was created in 2012 by the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Board of Governors, takes its name from the well-known poem, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – / Success in Circuit lies / Too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth’s superb surprise.” Past award winners include Pulitzer prize-winning poet Kay Ryan, former Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, and writer and A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor. Each year, recipients are chosen from a talented and diverse pool of individuals by the Museum’s board. This year’s winner is particularly deserving of the award.

Lesley Dill’s elegant work invests new meaning in the human form. By using paper, wire, horsehair, photography, foil, bronze, and music to convey the complexity of communication, much of her work alludes to or draws directly from the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Like the Amherst poet herself, Dill uses her provocative and intricate art to challenge the viewer to confront their linguistic relationships and perceptions of language.

“Using the written word as both a signifier and a kind of decorative motif,” Michael O’Sullivan writes for The Washington Post, “Dill covers everything she does with a seeming jumble of often illegible letters. Forcing the viewer to squint, stoop and search, sometimes in vain, for recognizable sentences, the artist creates messages that are as much a kind of linguistic code—marks representing ideas—as they are mute blemishes, abstractions whose resonance has more to do with emotion than rhetoric.”

If “language is just a series of symbols imbued with the meaning and power we give them,” Lennie Bennett writes for The Times, then Dill’s use of language as art “seeks a different affirmation, a more private pact that doesn’t require one necessarily to know a language, only to understand its intent.”

Dill will receive the award during the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute on December 9. The annual celebration brings together speakers, scholars, and fans of Emily Dickinson’s work to celebrate the illustrious poet and her writing. This year’s tribute will feature poet Tom Sleigh, who will read his favorite Dickinson poems and share from his own work, and Dill, who will discuss her Dickinson-inspired work. Following the presentation, the two artists will have a conversation about their shared muse.

Since its inception, the Emily Dickinson Museum has welcomed more than 150,000 visitors from 50 countries and serves as the premier center for study, interpretation, and celebration of Emily Dickinson’s place in literature, history, and culture. These awards will support the Museum’s mission to spark the imagination by amplifying Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home. The Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Learn more at www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.

‘Wild Nights with Emily’ Screening and Director’s Q&A, October 26, 2019

Join us for free screening of the SxSW dramatic comedy ‘Wild Nights with Emily,’ — starring Molly Shannon as the beloved poet Emily Dickinson. Followed by a Q&A with director Madeleine Olnek, and Emily Dickinson Museum curator Jane Wald. Don’t miss this opportunity to see the movie IndieWire called “hilarious” and “touching”!

Location: The screening will take place in Lipton Lecture Hall in the Amherst College Science Center on the east side of campus from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The hall is room E110 and is located on the first floor by the cafe.

Parking: Parking is available along East Drive and Merrill Science Drive and no permit is required (even if indicated).

About the Film

In the mid-19th century, Emily Dickinson is writing prolifically, baking gingerbread, and enjoying a passionate, lifelong relationship with another woman, her friend and sister-in-law Susan. Beloved comic Molly Shannon leads in this humorous yet bold reappraisal of Dickinson, informed by her private letters. While seeking publication of some of the 1,789 poems written during her lifetime, Emily (Shannon) finds herself facing a troupe of male literary gatekeepers too confused by her genius to take her work seriously. Instead her work attracts the attention of an ambitious woman editor, who also sees Emily as a convenient cover for her own role in buttoned-up Amherst’s most bizarre love triangle.

About the Filmmaker

Madeleine Olnek is a New York City based playwright and filmmaker. Her third feature film, Wild Nights With Emily, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from NYSCA and Jerome Foundation funds. Her second feature, The Foxy Merkins, included screenings at Sundance 2014, BAM Cinemafest, Lincoln Center, and an NYC theatrical run at IFP. The film had its international premiere at the Moscow Film Festival. Her debut feature, Codependent Lesbian Sex Alien Seeks Same, premiered at Sundance 2011. Its screening included MoMa, The Viennale and the Festival do Rio. Nominated for a Gotham award, it had theatrical runs in LA and NYC. Her award-winning and widely screened comedy shorts, “Countertransference” (2009), and “Hold Up” (2006), were official selections of Sundance; “Make Room For Phyllis” (2007) premiered at Sarasota. Olnek was awarded best female short film director at Sundance in 2009, by LA’s Women In Film organization.

Exciting News About Our Recent Grants

THE EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM RECEIVES OVER $350,000 IN GRANTS FOR INTERPRETIVE PLANNING, OPERATING SUPPORT, AND RESTORATION

The grants will be used to improve and increase access to Emily Dickinson’s poetic and personal legacy in the place she called home.

(AMHERST, Mass., August 28, 2019) – Today the Emily Dickinson Museum announced that it will receive over $350,000 in grants for interpretive planning, operational support, and restoration. The grants include a Public Humanities Planning grant of $63,025 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NEH award will support a year of interpretive planning to unite the Museum’s historic spaces and collections to better serve its growing contemporary audience. Public Humanities Planning grants from the NEH are typically awarded for up to $40,000 per grantee, but larger sums are granted to exceptionally ambitious and complex proposals like the Museum’s.

Program Director Brooke Steinhauser says the grants will allow the Museum to “incorporate current scholarship and more inclusive methodologies of interpretation” into its already vibrant programming. As the site of the largest and most varied collection of non-manuscript objects associated with Emily Dickinson and her family, and as the site where Dickinson penned nearly all of her 1,789 poems, the grants will help the Museum to consider how to provide interpretation of and access to its resources, resulting in the best possible visitor experience.

The Emily Dickinson Museum is one of 16 humanities projects this cycle to receive a grant from the NEH for planning or implementation, all of which will support vital research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The National Endowment for the Humanities preserves America’s rich history and cultural heritage, by encouraging and supporting scholarship and innovation in history, archaeology, philosophy, literature, and other humanities disciplines. In addition to the work at the Emily Dickinson Museum, this round of grants will enable continued work on the papers of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, as well as publication of the complete speeches, correspondence, and writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt, and a new scholarly edition and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In addition to the NEH grant, the Museum will receive $245,673 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, $30,000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, and $12,200 from the Massachusetts Culture Council’s Cultural Investment Portfolio. The IMLS grant will be used to catalog, manage, and maintain its 8,000+ piece collection. The planning grant from the Facilities Fund will be used to plan the restoration of the hallways, parlors, and bedrooms in the Museum, tripling the amount of restored interpretive space in the Homestead. The grant from the Cultural Investment Portfolio will support operations at the Museum. Executive Director Jane Wald says the grants will help to transform the Museum’s interpretation by “preparing to restore this private poet’s public spaces to their appearance during her most important writing years.”

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. They advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grant making, research, and policy development. Their vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov.

Managed in collaboration with MassDevelopment, the Cultural Facilities Fund provides major improvement grants to nonprofit cultural organizations, in recognition of their profound economic impact on communities across Massachusetts. Since 2006, the Fund has encouraged sound growth, supported important development projects, played a crucial role in the growth of local tourism, created thousands of jobs, and driven millions of dollars in private investment.

The Cultural Investment Portfolio provides both general operation and project-based grants to nonprofit organizations that enrich Massachusetts’ cultural life. The Portfolio works to strengthen a cultural sector that generates $1.2 billion in economic activity, creates thousands of jobs, and delivers programs to more than 20 million people a year. Not just a funder, the Portfolio is a source of invaluable expertise, advocacy, and peer dialogue.

Emily Dickinson and her British Contemporaries, November 9, 2019

4:30-6PM at the Emily Dickinson Museum Homestead

Scholar Páraic Finnerty presents this lecture on Emily Dickinson and her British contemporaries. He will discuss Dickinson’s reading of and response to three of her favorite British poets—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson—in relation to their nineteenth-century U.S. reception. The lecture will focus on the impact of Tennyson’s and Browning’s development and popularization of the dramatic lyric (later termed the dramatic monologue) on Dickinson’s poetics. In the process, Finnerty will explore how this context provides a new way of interpreting Dickinson’s poetry. Time for questions and answers will follow the talk.

This program is free and open to the public.

About the speaker: Páraic Finnerty is Reader in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare and co-author of Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle (2013). He is currently working on a monograph entitled Dickinson and her British Contemporaries, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Emily Dickinson International Society and serves on the Editorial Board of the Emily Dickinson Journal.

Call for Proposals for the Amherst Poetry Festival, July 3-25, 2019

The Emily Dickinson Museum is now accepting proposals for our seventh annual Amherst Poetry Festival, September 19-22, 2019!

Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, with support from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the Beveridge Family Foundation, Amherst Business Improvement District, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Jones Library, the Amherst Poetry Festival celebrates the poetic legacy of Emily Dickinson and the contemporary creativity of the Pioneer Valley and beyond.

Proposals for audience-centered workshops, panel discussions, and participatory programs are welcome. The Steering Committee especially welcomes the following:

- Submissions from groups of 2 – 5 poets
- Submissions that engage young attendees and those new to poetry
- Submissions that involve hands-on components

A $200 honorarium will be provided per event. Event facilitators are asked to pay their own travel and lodging expenses.

Proposals should be designed for one of the following program slots: (Individuals may submit for more than one program slot)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Poetry workshops for students of high school (grades 9-12). 45-minute classroom session, to be offered up to four times between 7:50am to 3pm. Partner schools will be shared with selected poets and will include schools in Hampshire and Hampden counties.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019

Daytime poetry workshops, panels, or participatory programs open to the public to occur at a variety of Festival venues, including on site at the Emily Dickinson Museum, at the Jones Library, Hope and Feathers Art Gallery, etc. (Examples of participatory programs might include mobile activities, resource booths, etc.). Event sessions are typically an hour and a half long.

Submission Guidelines:

Only submissions made in the online form will be considered. There is no fee to submit proposals.
Following your submission, please e-mail your resume/cv to edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.
- Include “POETRY FESTIVAL SUBMISSION” in the title of the e-mail. We can accept .pdf, .doc, .docx files.
  If applicable, you may also submit an image in .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, and .png format.
Selected facilitators will be notified by August 9, and will be asked to sign a letter of agreement confirming their participation in the Festival.
Submissions Due: Thursday, July 25, 2019, 11:59 pm EST.

Submissions will be judged on the following:

Originality – Is your idea bold and intriguing? Will it offer something new to our Festival?
Quality – Does the submission reflect thoughtful preparation? How are you uniquely qualified to facilitate this program?
Audience – Have you clearly outlined participatory elements? How does your proposal contribute to community-building for the Amherst Poetry Festival?
Special consideration will be given to Pioneer Valley and Massachusetts-based facilitators.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL

Questions? Email us at edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Image of "In Suspension" in the Homestead Conservatory

In Suspension: A site-specific art installation, June 21 – September 9, 2019

Wonder – is not

precisely knowing
And not precisely
knowing not –
A beautiful but

bleak condition
He has not lived
who has not felt –

Suspense – is his
maturer Sister –
Whether Adult Delight is Pain
Or of itself a
new misgiving –
This is the
Gnat that
mangles men –

-F1347

In Suspension

A site-specific art installation at the Emily Dickinson Museum featuring work by Tereza Swanda, Ingrid Pichler, and Fletcher Boote

The Emily Dickinson Museum is pleased to present this first site-specific art installation in the restored Homestead conservatory. In this small greenhouse Dickinson tended flowers “near and foreign,” forging a deep connection that permeated her poetry and daily life. Imagine dirt under the poet’s fingernails as she wrote the poems that immortalized flowers blooming in her garden, home, and Amherst’s fields and woodlands.

This mixed-media installation aims to forge the colors Dickinson saw from the conservatory out into her landscape. In this meditation on suspension, colors change based on the atmosphere, and the space between subjects. Light from color gels is cast throughout the room by projection and refraction. Sound is a complimentary element to color.

The installation is best viewed from inside the conservatory, which is open from 11AM-4:30PM each day the Museum is open (Wednesday through Monday). All are welcome inside to view the installation, but the space is restricted to four people at a time. Photography inside the installation is most welcome.

About the artists:

Tereza Swanda teaches at Dean College and has 20 years of color theory through painting. She graduated from Mass Art in Boston with a degree in Sculpture and Painting and holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has exhibited her own work extensively both locally, nationally and internationally over the last ten years. Learn more: https://www.mamatereza.net/

Ingrid Pichler specializes in site-specific glass installation for the private and public sector and is a visiting lecturer at Salem State University. Pichler has been working in architectural glass for almost thirty years. Throughout her career, her hands-on approach has enabled her to develop a keen understanding of the transformative potential of light in the context of architectural glass. Most of her works have been commissioned, location-specific installations, utilizing a wide range of techniques from traditional painting and staining, to new innovation for fusing and casting in contemporary glass technology. Learn more: http://www.pichlerart.com/

Fletcher Boote is a composer and performer investigating nuances of human relationships as they are expressed in arrangements of sounds. She has recently taught sound healing and vocal workshops at Princeton University and lead courses at Johnson State College. Boote has been working in sound for over a decade and has worked with students of Meredith Monk. Learn more: http://fletcherboote.com/

“Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life”, with Marta McDowell, December 15, 2019

4:30-6PM at the Amherst Woman’s Club at 35 Triangle Street, Amherst, MA

The cultivated world of plants, wildflowers, trees, and shrubs provided Emily Dickinson with a constant source of inspiration and companionship. On December 15, take a seated “tour” of Dickinson’s gardens with the author of Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places that Inspired the Poet. Led by celebrated garden historian and 2018 Gardener-in-Residence Marta McDowell, this talk will treat visitors to a seasonal exploration of the poet’s passion for the natural world.

A book signing follows the talk. Books will be available for purchase at the program. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public. Parking for this program is available at the Amherst Woman’s Club.

About Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life (Timber Press, 2019):

Emily Dickinson was a gardener as well as a poet. She tended flowers in her Amherst, Massachusetts garden and in the small conservatory that her father added on to their brick house on Main Street. Flowers have their own poetry. As she said, “flowers…, without lips, have language.” Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life explores the plants and places of Dickinson’s life alongside her poetry.

Richly illustrated with selections from Dickinson’s herbarium, period botanical art by three of Dickinson’s contemporaries, historical images, and new photographs, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life traces this little-know part of Dickinson’s life. It beautifully reveals the many ways her passion for plants sparked her creativity and inspired much of her beloved poetry.

About Marta McDowell:

Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. Her latest book is Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, 2019. Timber Press also published The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its seventh printing. Marta is working on a new book about The Secret Garden and its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, due out from Timber Press in 2022. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.

Emily Dickinson Birthday Open House, December 14, 2019

1-4PM at the Emily Dickinson Museum

You are cordially invited to celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 189th birthday at her home, the Emily Dickinson Museum! On December 14 join us for a festive open house. Tour the houses for free, enjoy the Holiday decorations and live music, create an artistic postcard to add to our “The World Writes Back: Postcards to Emily Dickinson” project, and, of course, enjoy coconut cake made from the poet’s own recipe. All are welcome and no fee or reservations are required.

About Dickinson’s birthday: Emily Dickinson, the middle child of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, was born on December 10, 1830, in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. She celebrated 55 birthdays before her death in 1886. As an adult she wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” (Johnson L379)

Birthday Celebration Schedule:

1PM Open House begins:

Walk through the Homestead and The Evergreens at your leisure and talk with our knowledgeable guides.
Don’t forget to check out the exhibition of postcards to Emily in the Homestead!
Crafts: At the Homestead create your own artistic postcard to hang in our exhibition. At the Evergreens create a traditional ornament to hang on the Dickinson family Christmas tree.

1PM-1:20PM Yosen Wang String Quartet at the Homestead

1:20-2PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Alex Santos

2-3PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Sebastian Son

Sebastian Son is a junior at Amherst College. He majors in English, and in his free time loves to play music and perform on stage. Around campus, he sings in an a capella group (DQ) and performs with the Theater and Dance Department. He is slated to sing and act in Anna Plummer’s senior project, the Puddle Jumping Society, which opens on March 26th at Amherst College.

2:30PM Coconut Cake is served! Learn more about Dickinson’s recipe for this tasty treat here.

3-3:30PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Yee-Lynn Lee

3:30-4PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Anna Buswell

4PM Open House concludes.

This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me – The simple News that Nature told – With tender Majesty