A Loaded Gun

by Jerome Charyn

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
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.

  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.

  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.

  CODA: Sam Carlo

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

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