119“He looks like Captain Ahab ashore”: Cornell, Theater of the Mind, p. 15.
119“Alexander Liberman once said”: Deborah Solomon, p. 168.
120“Among these pseudo-arts”: ibid., pp. 82–83.
121“on tiny scraps of stationary pinned together”: Emily Dickinson, Bolts of Melody, pp. xii–xvi.
121“a transcendent moment”: Porter, p. 203.
122“the single most trenchant response”: Benfey, Summer of Hummingbirds, p. 258.
123“their dialogue across a hundred years”: Porter, p. 199.
123“artists of aloneness”: ibid., p. 220.
124“recurrent obsession”: Cornell, Theater of the Mind, p. 256.
124“still-unknown objects”: Simic, p. 14.
124“If her poems are like his boxes”: ibid., p. 75.
125“the eccentric, quivering, overstrung recluse”: Deborah Solomon, p. 214.
125“He would have parties where he served”: ibid., p. 357.
126“The stars kept winking and blinking”: Sewall, Life of Emily Dickinson, p. 250.
126“Father believed; and mother loved”: ibid., p. 128.
127“In a secret room in a secret house”: Simic, p. 48.
127“we make our sibling kin”: ibid., p. 64.
128“We are born originals”: Kent, Once a Dancer, p. 31.
128“Their beauty was ethereal and unearthly”: ibid., p. 32.
128“I wished to speak in a different way”: ibid., p. 39.
128“gold and ice cream”: ibid., p. 58.
128“the gyroscopic laws of tops”: ibid., p. 47.
129“I decided that more should happen”: ibid., p. 180.
130“His hands were kind of yellowish”: Kent, interview.
130“He was a little too engaged”: ibid.
130“My favorite form of entertainment”: ibid.
132“The way Mr. B communicated with me”: Kent, Once a Dancer, p. 78.
132“Some excellent technicians”: ibid., p. 158.
SIX: Phantom Lady
133“every finger in place with such energy”: Danly, p. 35.
133“It was too solemn, too heavy”: Bingham, Ancestors’ Brocades, p. 224.
133“To capture the flow of movement”: ibid., p. 224–225.
134“With Dickinson the story”: Danly, p. 40.
134“Secure the Shadow ere the substance”: Bernhard, p. 595.
134“flat, itinerant work”: ibid., p. 596.
135“a cultural palimpsest of our emotions”: Smith, “Iconic Power . . .”
135“has played a role”: Danly, p. 35.
135“Her face is as familiar as a mask”: ibid.
137“Her eyes were large, dark, and oddly lashless”: Oates, p. 46.
138“Emily could have no idea”: ibid., p. 48.
138“Why am—I—”: ibid., p. 55.
138“It’s some sort of computer printout”: ibid., p. 56.
139“that looked like a bridal gown”: ibid., p. 59.
139“a shallow indentation”: ibid., p. 69.
139“where flames fluttered as in an anteroom”: ibid., p. 70.
139“Accelerate, Mistress”: ibid., p. 71.
139“antique”: ibid., p. 73.
139“Bright Knots”: ibid.
140“as if we were the ones who had perished”: Vendler, p. 139.
141“a vortex of compelling mystery”: Danly, p. 39.
141“Whether this picture turns out to represent”: Smith, “A New Daguerreotype,” pp. 4–5.
142“undeniably plain”: Patterson, p. 75.
144“fictitious set of sexual circumstances”: Leyda, Years and Hours, vol. 1, p. lxix.
145“Unquestioningly she was standing”: Patterson, p. 117.
147“erotic loss or betrayal”: Vendler, p. 51.
149“Nothing would be more delicious to me”: Emily Dickinson, Single Hound, p.xvii.
150“the record book of the funeral director”: Longsworth, World of Emily Dickinson, p. 112.
SEVEN: Within a Magic Prison
153“Except for Shakespeare”: Bloom, The Western Canon, p. 272.
154“throws several birds”: Werner, “A Woe of Ecstasy,” p. 46.
155“unformed, worksheet jottings”: Emily Dickinson, Letters of . . ., p. 914.
156“in that it is in the ink and in the handwriting”: ibid., p. 929.
156“disappeared from view”: Werner, “A Woe of Ecstasy,” p. 27.
156“textual borders”: ibid., p. 28.
158“are not so much ‘works’ as symptoms”: ibid., p. 27.
158“Homelessness is our inheritance”: ibid., p. 28.
159“depict the beauty”: ibid., p. 29.
159“as if poems, letters”: ibid., pp. 29–30.
159“are the latest and furthest affirmation”: ibid., p. 31.
159“a work in the throes”: ibid., p. 31.
160“as well, of course, as our own”: ibid., p. 31.
160“She cannot reason at all”: Tate, p. 21.
160“turbulence of mind”: Werner, “Woe of Ecstacy,” p. 33.
160“to register the progress”: ibid., p. 38.
160“the hand in the present tense”: ibid., p. 41.
161“as an autonomous lyrics throe”: ibid., p. 44.
162“solitary outriders”: Werner, “Most Arrows,” p. 16.
164“Agoraphobia was her alibi”: Werner, Open Folios, p. 27.
164“Having abandoned the institution”: Werner, “Most Arrows,” p. 18.
164“the spectacular commotion and turbulence”: ibid., p. 1.
169“is about not just whether there is a God”: Faust, p. 208.
170“infantry engagements, even as they grew”: ibid., p. 41.
171“it’s not clear that God won”: Hirschorn, Interview.
173“the book is in a single word”: James, p. 209.
173“elaborately and massively dreary”: ibid., p. 210.
173“He traveled”: Flaubert, p. 455.
EIGHT: Nothing
175“synesthesia of sight and sound”: Bervin and Werner, p. 200.
176“perhaps even pinned close”: ibid., p. 200.
176The first act of flight: ibid., p. 207.
176“the isolate, piercing notes of a bird”: ibid., p. 215.
176“a whir of words”: ibid., p. 200.
177“We have to think of such fragments”: Bervin and Werner, p. 8.
177“When we say small, we often mean”: ibid..
177“These envelopes have been opened”: ibid., p. 9.
177“A message enclosed in an envelope”: ibid., p. 212.
177“Her own life was reportless”: Werner, Interview.
178“The envelope is the repository”: Bervin and Werner, p. 213.
178“The inaudible whirring of the envelopes”: ibid., p. 213.
178“My father first read”: Werner, Interview.
182“have dared to show us the ways”: Bervin and Werner, p. 6.
182“Viewing these ‘envelopes’ as visual objects”: ibid., p. 7.
183“regular irregularities”: “Emily Dickinson’s Visual Language,” Farr, p. 250.
183“an unrhymed shard of verse”: ibid., p. 256.
183“astonishing recklessness . . . by the snapping”: Bervin and Werner, p. 205.
183“promotes a curiously hypnotic effect”: Werner, Interview.
183“‘Nothing’ . . . was a totemic—and defiant–word”: Bervin and Werner, p. 6.
184“worked away from the audience”: Howe, Interview.
184“I was about nine”: Thomas Gardner, p. 2.
185“my father and I were undemonstrative shy”: ibid., p. 140.
185“I felt vividly how tiny and birdlike”: ibid., p. 142.
185“not only was he a lawyer”: ibid., p. 144.
186“I’m slightly agoraphobic”: Howe, Interview.
186“Noah Webster’s pages bristle”: Thomas Gardner, p. 157.
186“Did she simply grab something at
186“Every mark on a page is acoustic”: Howe, Interview.
186“The sound of what you say sings”: Thomas Gardner, p. 141.
187“Emily Dickinson in sense had a happy life”: Howe, Interview.
187“with ink on her hands”: Thomas Gardner, p. 147.
187“They’re erotic”: Howe, Interview.
NINE: Cleopatra’s Company
188“daughters of Erin”: Beecher and Stowe, p. 311.
188“excessive exercise of the intellect”: ibid., p. 258.
189“It was at his dying bed”: Stowe, Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, p. xxxv.
190“Her writings flowed onto the paper”: Wilson, Patriotic Gore p. 34.
190“They come before us arguing and struggling”: ibid., p. 6.
191“Emily Dickinson was born to her talent”: Emily Dickinson, Poems of . . . (1955), vol. 1, p. vii.
191“like forty locked doors”: Werner, Open Folios, p. 36.
191“The primary project of the fascicles”: Smith, Rowing in Eden, p. 92.
191“The handwriting is fierce”: ibid., p. 17.
191“expectations created by typeface”: ibid., p. 83.
192“the trajectory of her desire”: Werner, Open Folios, p. 4.
192“If you follow the word”: Howe, The Birth-Mark, p. 170.
192“I think she may have chosen to enter”: ibid.
193“a dart that returns immediately”: Bervin and Werner, p. 25.
193“Freedom to roam poetically”: Howe, My Emily Dickinson, p. 80.
193“The poet is an intermediary hunting form”: ibid., pp. 79–80.
193“the aggression in God’s yellow eye”: ibid., p. 136.
193“in holograph Dickinson’s poems”: Smith, Rowing in Eden, p. 80.
194“into the blank and unfeeling”: Vendler, 291.
194“Writing traces the way”: Werner, Open Folios, p. 22.
194“Noticable change of appearance”: Emily Dickinson, Poems of . . . (1955), vol. 1, pp. liv–lix
195“word-paintings”: Werner, Open Folios, p. 23.
195“dangerous misssion”: Shapiro, Letter.
195“the spaces between the words”: Shapiro, “Secrets of the Pen,” p. 231.
196“She was like a wounded animal”: ibid.
196“The cometary pace of her thought”: Werner, Open Folios, p. 21.
197“Since Cleopatra died”: Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act 4, scene 14.
198“a dead spot: Benfey, Interview.
198“and vanished into thin air”: Benfey, Summer of Hummingbirds, p. 59.
198“I remember her distinctly”: Susan Dickinson.
199“I knew she was taciturn”: ibid.
199“Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote”: Smith, Rowing in Eden, p. 144.
201“Why don’t we talk”: Benfey, Interview.
TEN: The Witch’s Hour
203“For motherhood . . . is the great mesh”: Rich, p. 260.
203“within the mothering role”: ibid., p. 263.
204“Talent hits a target”: Andrew Solomon, p. 412.
204“Every number has a kind of taste”: Benfey, Interview.
204“HAMLET: Do you see yonder”: Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 2.
204“and for Dickinson”: Benfey, Interview.
205“the tiniest visual details”: Sacks, pp. 195–197.
205“absolute pitch”: ibid., p. 199.
205“Numbers for them are holy”: ibid., p. 298.
205“thought-scape”: ibid., p. 211.
206“There is no danger”: Tanenhaus.
207“Letters are scrawls, turnabouts”: Howe, The Birth-mark, p. 141.
207“Spaces between letters, dashes”: ibid., p. 143.
208“the brain begins by disorganizing”: Andreasen, p. 78.
208“associative links run wild”: ibid.
209“the cosmic microwave afterglow”: Angier.
211“It is the moral luck of making”: Gopnik, “Van Gogh’s Ear,” p. 55.
CODA: Sam Carlo
216“disappoinment in a much-too-loved woman friend”: Emily Dickinson, Bolts of Melody, p. 4.
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Benfey, Christopher. Interview with the author, December 7, 2011.
———. A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, & Martin Johnson Heade. Reprint. New York: Penguin, 2009.
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——�
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———. “Van Gogh’s Ear: The Christmas Eve that Changed Modern Art. The New Yorker, January 4, 2010, pp. 48–55.
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