A Loaded Gun (28 page)

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.

E
IGHT
: Nothing

175
    
“synesthesia of sight and sound”
: Bervin and Werner, p. 200.

176
    
“perhaps even pinned close”
: ibid., p. 200.

176
    
The 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 hand?”
ibid., p. 159.

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.

N
INE
: 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.

T
EN
: 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.

209
    
“If I ask, will there be a planet”
: ibid.

211
    
“It is the moral luck of making”
: Gopnik, “Van Gogh's Ear,” p. 55.

C
ODA
: Sam Carlo

216
    
“disappoinment in a much-too-loved woman friend”
: Emily Dickinson,
Bolts of Melody,
p. 4.

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———.
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———
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———
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———
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———
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———
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———
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———
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———
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———
.
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———
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———.
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———
.
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