A Loaded Gun (27 page)

91
      
“a cage-bird life”
: Leyda,
Years and Hours,
vol. 2, p. 388.

91
      
“The works of women are symbolical”
: ibid.

94
      
“and is one of the oddest”
: Benfey,
Summer of Hummingbirds,
p. 244.

94
      
“a bird with wings outstretched”
: ibid., p. 245.

95
      
“streaming from its pyramidal smokestack”
: ibid., p. 247.

95
      
“suprising poems”
: Leyda, “Miss Emily's Maggie,” p. 150.

96
      
“Every fence was employed to isolate”
: ibid., p. 164.

96
      
“Maggie's brother is killed in the mines”
: ibid., p. 160.

97
      
“I don't know whether it is day or night”
: ibid., pp. 156–57.

97
      
“The Dickinsons didn't like strangers”
: ibid., p. 153.

97
      
“Mr. Dicksom said he would”
: ibid., p. 157.

98
      
“the North Wind of the family”
: ibid., p. 160.

98
      
“There was an invisible story”
: Murray, p. 18.

98
      
“a cacophonous tumbling kitchen”
: ibid.

98
      
“the most creative room in the house”
: ibid., p. 99.

98
      
“architecture of the unseen”
: ibid., p. 153.

98
      
“a seamlessness between the motions”
: ibid., p. 120.

99
      
“provide a halting”
: ibid., p. 123.

102
    
“balloons embody her imagination's pilgrimages”
: Snively, “Myself endued Balloon,”, p. 1.

102
    
“Vehicles of beauty and danger”
: ibid.

102
    
“Surely Emily intuited that her maid would”
: Murray, p. 203.

102
    
“muse, lookout, and beckoner”
: ibid., p. 218.

103
    
“like the Wren”
: ibid.

103
    
“most interesting & most startling”
: Bingham,
Ancestors' Brocades,
p. 225.

103
    
“She had a Boston miniaturist create”
: Bernhard, p. 600.

103
    
“your unworth but true Maggie”
: Murray, p. 213.

104
    
“with aplomb”
: ibid.

104
    
“Little hussy”
: Gordon, p. 160.

104
    
“the most dangerous type of alien”
: Leyda, “Miss Emily's Maggie,” p. 159.

104
    
“madness was one of the gentler”
: ibid.

105
    
“one grate trouble that I have”
: ibid., p. 158.

F
IVE
: Ballerinas in a Box

107
    
“Most of us are half in love”
: Sewall,
Life of Emily Dickinson,
p. 150.

107
    
“spinsterly angularity”
: ibid., p. 15.

107
    
“wasted in the desert of her crudities”
: ibid., p. 40.

108
    
“Her life was one of the richest”
: Tate, pp. 19–20.

108
    
“probably the worst book on Emily”
: Porter, p. 200.

109
    
“Dear, dear Sue, I have loved you”
: Patterson, p. 49.

109
    
“On a day of early March”
: ibid., p. 116.

109
    
“Upon the dead, and somewhat desolate”
: ibid., p. 57.

110
    
“Having spent her entire capital”
: ibid., p. 395.

111
    
“stirred to poetry”
: ibid., p. 395.

112
    
“She was no happier than Emily”
: ibid., p. 332.

114
    
“I've never called myself an artist”
: Ashton, p. 4.

116
    
“The figure of the young danseuse”
: Deborah Solomon, p. 111.

117
    
“His greeting was joyous and happy”
: ibid., p. 351.

118
    
“frail teener salesgirl”
: Cornell,
Theater of the Mind,
p. 243.

118
    
“metaphysics of ephemera”
: ibid., p. 394.

118
    
“that curiously plaguing phenomenon”
: ibid., p. 417.

118
    
“America still waits to be discovered”
: Simic, p. 15.

119
    
“He adored women, but relationships weren't”
: Deborah Solomon, p. 283.

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.

S
IX
: 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.

S
EVEN
: 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.