Learn the essential skills of archaeology at the home of one of America’s greatest poets while earning six academic credits! The Field School is sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Department of Anthropology, the University of Massachusetts Division of Continuing and Professional Education, and the Emily Dickinson Museum.
For more information, please contact Eric Johnson: ericjohnson@anthro.umass.edu
Free and open to all
The Emily Dickinson Poetry Walk marks the anniversary of the poet’s death (on May 15, 1886) with readings of her poetry at historic sites around Amherst. This spring, the Walk will explore the poet’s many sources of inspiration, including the arts, nature, relationships and cherished books. In homage to Dickinson’s role in sparking our imaginations, we will also read a contemporary poem influenced by her life and work at each stop.
The Poetry Walk begins at 10:30 a.m. on the Homestead lawn and proceeds on foot through Amherst, stopping at sites significant in Dickinson’s life, and concluding at the poet’s grave in West Cemetery. At the cemetery, participants are invited to join in the traditional light-hearted lemonade toast to the Poet and to read a favorite Dickinson poem or original work in memory of the poet.
The stops will be announced on this page in advance of the walk. Latecomers are welcome to join the tour at any stop. This year’s selection of poems will be read by volunteers from the audience. Participants may wish to bring their own copy of Dickinson’s poems to follow along. All who would like to read should arrive at the Homestead at 10:15 a.m. to receive an assignment; poems will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.
Participants are encouraged to carpool. Wheelchair accessible parking is available at the Homestead; all other vehicles are asked to park on the street or use town parking, a short walk from the Museum. For more information about accessibility on the Walk, call 413-542-2034. The Poetry Walk takes place rain or shine.
The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion group meets monthly September through May (except for December) for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. Featured facilitators each month offer fresh perspectives on Dickinson’s poetry. While no RSVP is required, participants are invited to e-mail the Program Department to receive a list of poems for discussion.
Topic: How dreary–to be–Somebody!//How public–like a Frog–“: On uses of of nature, subjectivity and observation in E.D.
This discussion will explore Dickinson’s method of observation through a sampling of well-loved and lesser known poems. What natural elements or “characters” attract her atttention? After something captures her notice, what methods does she use to register it?
Polina Barskova, Associate Professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College, received her B.A. from St. Petersburg University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkely. Her scholarly publications include articles on Nabokov, the Bakhtin brothers, early Soviet film, and the aestheticization of historical trauma, primarily, culture of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944). She has also authored eight books of poetry and one book of prose in Russian. Three books of her poetry in English translation were published recently: This Lamentable City (Tupelo Press), Zoo in Winter (Melville House Press), Relocations (Zephyr Press).
Time: Noon – 2 p.m.
Location: The Poetry Discussion Group meets at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, on the second floor of Amherst College’s Frost Library. Attendees are welcome to bring a bag lunch; beverages and a sweet snack are provided. Participants should report directly to the Library, and do not need to stop at the Museum.
Parking: Free parking for this program is available in the Amherst College Alumni Lot. Visitors to campus with any official state-issued Handicapped placards are permitted to park in any marked handicapped spot on campus without obtaining any additional permits from Amherst College.
See a campus map parking map.
Fee: The fee for Museum Friends is $12/session; the general fee is $15/session. Season subscriptions are $80 for Museum members and $105 for non-members. To become a Friend of the Emily Dickinson Museum and enjoy member discounts, click here.
For more information, contact the Program Department: edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org or call (413) 542-2034.
May Featured ReadersOlivia Caldwell is a Division II student at Hampshire College studying Poetry, Photography, and Sociocultural Anthropology. She is a pun enthusiast and cat mom who spends much of her time watching mid-2000s dramatic television and considering the fate of humanity. Her work can be found in Forest For The Trees Literary Journal and Enigma Literary Magazine.
Mars Early-Hubelbank is a soon-to-be graduate of Mount Holyoke College. Their identity lies at an intersection of Blackness and transness, to name a few things.
Lucy Liu studies studio art and poetry at Smith College. She grew up in Beijing, speaking and writing in English and Chinese.
First Thursday poetry readings at the Homestead
The Emily Dickinson Museum participates in Amherst Arts Night Plus on first Thursdays each month. Free and open to all! Each month enjoy the following:
Please note that the works of guest artists may contain sensitive or mature material and do not necessarily represent the views of the Emily Dickinson Museum.
Emily Dickinson—when she counted at all—counted poets first. In this intimate poetry workshop held during private hours at the Emily Dickinson Museum, be inspired by the space and place that informed Dickinson’s own revolutionary poetic voice. Adult writers of any level and degree of experience are welcome to participate in this workshop facilitated by poet and writing coach Burleigh Muten. A private tour and prompts based on Dickinson’s life and work will guide the workshop. Participants will spend time writing poetry in the historic rooms of the Dickinson Homestead, including the poet’s bedroom. Snacks will be provided.
This program is offered as part of ArtWeek, presented by the Highland Street Foundation and produced by the Boch Center.
Burleigh Muten reads
About the Facilitator: Burleigh Muten is a tour guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum and the author of Miss Emily a verse novel for young readers that celebrates the poet’s playful relationships with the children in her life. Muten is also a poet, a writing coach, and has led writing workshops and retreats for adults throughout New England. Visit Burleigh’s website: https://www.burleighmuten.com
In celebration of ArtWeek and National Poetry Month, the Emily Dickinson Museum will make poetry come to life when it rains in Amherst. See if you can spot all six selected poems around town from our Art of Rain Poetry competition. We promise these compositions will make even a soggy stroll delightful. As you discover the rain poems, be sure to snap a photo and tag it on social media with #ArtofRainPoetry !
Poems were selected after a call for submissions. Our thanks to the nearly 80 poets who sent in poems!
Jill Hughes is a reader, seeker, observer of the humanities. She is a career student and apprentice, as well as a current co-owner at Collective Copies and Levellers Press. In 2017, she received her MA in Poetry and Poetics from the University of Maine, where she also co-founded a multidisciplinary performance series called The Happenings Series.
Loy Kong, a five-year-old student at Crocker Farm Elementary, has been in Amherst since last August. This is the first time that she has been in another country. She played alone for the first few months because of the language barrier, but she has always stayed positive and said, “Mommy, don’t worry. It is going to be ok.” Now she has good friends and she is so happy about that. She loves learning new things and writing poems.
Manuel Becerra is a Mexican poet who is working on a poetry book about Emily Dickinson. He is the author of five books and has won numerous national and international literature awards. His work has been translated into English, French and Italian. Becerra held a fellowship at Art Omi in New York, 2018. Find more of his poems here.
Margaret Winikates is a poet, author, and museum educator from Boston, MA. She majored in English Literature and Language at Harvard University. She currently works for the New England Museum Association, is a board member for the Museum Education Roundtable, and is a member of the Leadership Council for MassCreative. Her poems, essays, and short fiction can be found at MassPoetry’s U35 archive, all the sins, the Center for the Future of Museums, Window Cat Press, Connected at the Peabody Essex Museum, and Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, as well as at https://mwinikates.com/.
Howie Faerstein is a poet whose second full-length poetry collection, Googootz and Other Poems, published by Press 53 came out in September, 2018. His work can be found in numerous journals, including Great River Review, Nimrod, Cutthroat, Upstreet, Off the Coast, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Mudfish, and on-line in Gris-Gris, and Connotation Press. He lives in Florence, Massachusetts.
Our Partners:
About Art Week: Presented by the Highland Street Foundation and produced by the Boch Center, ArtWeek is an annual award-winning innovative festival featuring more than 500 unique and creative experiences that are hands-on, interactive or offer behind-the-scenes access to artists or the creative process. ArtWeek was born in Boston in 2013 and now serves over 100 towns across Massachusetts as the signature nonprofit community program of the Boch Center.
About Mass Poetry: Mass Poetry believes that words matter. They support poets and poetry in Massachusetts, help to broaden the audience of poetry readers, bring poetry to readers of all ages, and transform people’s lives through inspiring verse. They are a 501(c)(3) organization.
– Emily Dickinson to T. W. Higginson, February 1863 (L280)
Newfoundland Dog. Painted by Col. H. Smith, eng. Lizars
Carlo was Edward Dickinson’s gift to Emily, his eldest daughter, in the fall of 1849, presumably to accompany her on the long walks she enjoyed in the woods and fields of Amherst. Apparently a brown Newfoundland (perhaps a curly-coated Lesser Newfoundland, for Dickinson once jokingly sent one of the dog’s tawny curls to a friend purporting it to be her own), Carlo may have been procured from family friends, the Huntingtons, who raised litters of the massive breed at their farm on the Connecticut River in Hadley. If so, it adds wit to Dickinson’s naming Carlo after the pointer of St. John Rivers in her favorite novel at the time, Jane Eyre.
Other novels soon featured dogs named Carlo – Ik Marvel’s Reveries of a Bachelor, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford Rise – and by 1858 five dogs named Carlo were registered in Amherst, including another Newfoundland owned by local photographer J.L. Lovell. The breed, known for its friendly, inquisitive intelligence, enjoyed popularity among the Romantics, and was a favorite of authors whom Dickinson admired – Byron, Scott, Dickens, and Robert Burns among them. Harriet Beecher Stowe included a Newfoundland named Bruno in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Dickinson’s first written mention of her “mute confederate” occurred in an 1850 valentine that was published by the Amherst College student magazine, The Indicator.
Thereafter she spoke often of Carlo in several dozen letters and even in a few poems, usually with homely humor, and always with affection and respect. She delighted that Major Edward B. Hunt, watching Carlo snap up a bit of fallen cake at the Commencement Tea in 1860, believed her dog “understood gravitation” (L342b). In April 1862, she introduced Carlo to her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson by letter, saying, “You ask of my Companions. Hills – sir – and the Sundown, and a Dog large as myself, that my Father bought me -” (L261). It seems clear from her commentary that Carlo provided the poet great psychological comfort over the years, while her dependence on his protective presence can be gauged by her marked reclusivity once he was gone.
Neighbors described Dickinson coming to call with her outsize dog beside her. One remembered Dickinson saying to her when, as a child, she walked with the poet and her “huge dog”: “Gracie, do you know that I believe that the first to come and greet me when I go to heaven will be this dear, faithful old friend Carlo?” (Years and Hours, Vol. II, p. 21).
When Carlo died at about age 17 in January 1866, Dickinson announced his death in a terse letter to Higginson: “Carlo died. / E. Dickinson / Would you instruct me now?” (L314). Months later, still feeling his absence, she paid him this tribute:
Time is a test of trouble
But not a remedy –
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.
(Fr861)
The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, ed. Jay Leyda, Vol. I, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960
– Emily Dickinson to Mabel Loomis Todd, late September 1882 (L769)
Mabel Loomis Todd, around the time of her arrival in Amherst
Born November 10, 1856, Mabel Loomis Todd was the only child of Eben J. and Mary Wilder Loomis of Washington, D.C. Her father, a clerk in the Nautical Almanac Office, was an amateur naturalist and poet. A pretty, vivacious, talented young woman, she attended Georgetown Female Seminary, then studied piano and voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She cultivated, as well, her talents for flower-painting and writing, and had had stories published by the time of her marriage in 1876 to astronomer David Todd.
In September 1881, the Todds moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, so that David could take the new professorship of astronomy at Amherst College. Mabel Todd wrote her parents of a Miss Dickinson who wrote poetry and lived such a secluded life she was called by some in town “the myth.” Todd soon became friends with the poet’s sister-in-law Susan Dickinson and was invited by the poet’s siblings, Austin and Lavinia Dickinson, to play the piano and sing for their reclusive sister and invalid mother. Over the next four and a half years Todd often performed music in the Homestead, becoming acquainted with the poet by way of exchanged notes and occasional conversations between rooms, yet never saw her face to face.
Nearly two years after Emily Dickinson’s death, Lavinia brought to Todd a portion of her sister’s recently-found poems and begged the younger woman to get them published. By that time Mabel was well into a thirteen-year clandestine love affair with Austin Dickinson, an intimacy that had alienated her from Susan, Austin’s wife. Lavinia had first asked Sue to publish the poems, but, impatient with Sue’s slow progress, Lavinia retrieved the manuscripts and brought them secretly to Mabel.
Despite initial reluctance, Todd spent the next nine years ordering, transcribing, and editing hundreds of poems into three volumes of Poems by Emily Dickinson published in 1890, 1891, and 1896 respectively. Todd enlisted the help of Thomas Wentworth Higginson in the selection process, the two making changes in punctuation and some rhymes, and adding titles, attempting to shape Emily Dickinson’s unusual verse forms to the tastes of late 19th-century readers. Both also worked assiduously to herald and promote the volumes. With Lavinia’s help, Todd rounded up Dickinson’s vast correspondence with friends for a two-volume Letters of Emily Dickinson, published in 1894. She gave lectures about the mysterious poet of Amherst, thus influencing the public’s initial image of Dickinson.
After Austin’s death in 1895, tensions between the Todds and Dickinsons led to a March 1898 lawsuit over a piece of land, fueled by long-standing jealousies, fears, and vindictiveness on both sides. When Mabel lost the suit, she angrily locked away a mass of unpublished poems and Dickinson family papers still in her possession. For fifteen years she enjoyed a lecture career that took her all over the northeast United States speaking on some three dozen topics. She accompanied her husband on eclipse expeditions around the world and locally was instrumental in founding the Amherst Historical Society, the Amherst Woman’s Club, and the Amherst chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
A stroke in 1913 ended Todd’s writing and lecturing. The Todds moved to Florida soon afterwards, but in 1931 Mrs. Todd was goaded by Martha Bianchi’s publications of her Aunt Emily’s materials to reissue, with her daughter Millicent Todd Bingham’s help, an enlarged version of the earlier Letters of Emily Dickinson. Other materials in Todd’s possession were later published by Bingham following her mother’s death from stroke in October 1932. Bingham subsequently gave Amherst College the Dickinson poems and letters in her family’s possession.
Bingham, Millicent Todd. Ancestors’ Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson. New York and London: Harper Brothers, 1945.
Longsworth, Polly. Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and daughter, ca. 1884
– Emily Dickinson to T. W. Higginson, June 1869 (L330)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, co-editor of the first two collections of Emily Dickinson’s poems, was a man of astonishingly varied talents and accomplishments. A lifelong radical, he was an outspoken abolitionist, advocate of women’s rights, and founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. During the Civil War, he served as commander of the first Union regiment of freed African American soldiers. An ordained Unitarian minister, Higginson was also a prolific writer; his most highly regarded work was a memoir of his war years, Army Life in a Black Regiment.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge in 1823 into a distinguished family whose ancestors trace back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He attended Harvard College and graduated from the Harvard Divinity School. Before the Civil War, Higginson served as a minister at several Unitarian churches and was involved in a number of radical political causes and activities, including active support of John Brown as well as membership in the Free Soil party.
Higginson had a long association with the Atlantic Monthly, contributing a number of articles, essays and poems. In the April 1862 issue, he published “Letter to a Young Contributor,” in which he encouraged and advised aspiring writers. Within a month, he received a note from Emily Dickinson, then 31 years old, along with four poems, thus beginning a relationship that was to last until the poet’s death in 1886.
Although he did not actively urge Emily Dickinson to publish during her lifetime, Higginson became, in Dickinson’s own term, her “Preceptor.” Written communication between the two continued after their first letter; about 70 letters from their correspondence survive, along with about 100 poems. Higginson also visited the poet twice and attended her funeral in the spring of 1886, reading a poem by Emily Brontë, “No Coward Soul Is Mine.”
After Dickinson’s death, Higginson assisted Mabel Loomis Todd in editing her poems, lending his considerable literary influence to the eventual publication by Roberts Brothers, Boston, of a first series in 1890 and a second the following year. Both volumes were well received by critics and the public.
Higginson published more than 500 essays and 35 books during his long life. He was active into the twentieth century, producing memoirs, novels, political tracts, and biographies. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1911, survived by his second wife, Mary Thacher Higginson, and two daughters.
The influence of Thomas Wentworth Higginson as a liberal thinker and activist remains historically significant, and several of his books are in print. However, it is Higginson’s relationship with Emily Dickinson, as correspondent, advisor and editor, for which he is best remembered.
Bingham, Millicent Todd, Ancestor’s Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson. New York, Dover, 1945.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” Atlantic Monthly LXVIII (October 1891), pp. 444-456.
_________“Letter to a Young Contributor,” Atlantic Monthly IX (April 1862), pp. 401-11.
__________ The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Edited by Howard N. Meyer. Cambridge, MA, Da Capo Press, 2000.
Wineapple, Brenda, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New York, Knopf Publishing Group, 2008.
– Emily Dickinson to William S. Jackson, late summer, 1885 (L1015)
Helen Hunt Jackson, ca. 1875
Helen Hunt Jackson, a popular American poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist was—like Dickinson—a daughter of Amherst. She was born on October 14, 1830, two months before Emily Dickinson, but it was not until later in life that she formed a friendship with the poet.
The accidental death of Jackson’s first husband, Edward Hunt, in 1863, along with the deaths of both of her children may have propelled her toward writing as a way of dealing with grief. From the mid-1860s, she focused on establishing herself as a writer and avidly sought publication. In 1875 she married her second husband, William S. Jackson, and the couple settled in Colorado, making occasional trips back to New England.
Jackson was re-introduced to Emily Dickinson through editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who acted as a mentor to both women. Jackson visited the poet on two occasions, first in 1876 and two years later in 1878. During one of those visits, Jackson tried to persuade Dickinson to submit her poem, “Success is counted sweetest” (Fr112), to an upcoming volume of anonymous poetry, A Masque of Poets, published by Roberts Brothers of Boston. Dickinson’s poem did eventually appear in the book, although it is unclear whether the poet actually submitted it or if Jackson sent it without the poet’s explicit consent.
Jackson did not understand Dickinson’s reluctance to publish since, she argued, the poet had such remarkable verse to share. Writing out of frustration in 1884, she told Dickinson, “It is cruel and wrong to your ‘day & generation’ that you will not give them light…I do not think we have a right to withhold from the world a word or a thought any more than a deed, which might help a single soul” (L937a). Jackson even offered to be Dickinson’s literary executor, but Jackson died before the poet did, making such a possibility—if Dickinson had even wished to accept it–moot.
Toward the end of her career, Helen Hunt Jackson became a passionate advocate for the rights of Native American people. Her political commitment inspired a critique of U.S. policy, A Century of Dishonor (1881) and her most famous work, the novel Ramona (1883-1884). Even from her death bed Jackson continued to work politically and wrote to President Grover Cleveland with a plea that he might redress “the wrongs of the Indian race” (Phillips, p. 272).
Jackson died in 1885, a year before the poet, after a bad fall and complications from cancer. In a sympathy letter to the writer’s husband, Dickinson remembered her last written exchange with the indefatigable Jackson. “Dear friend, can you walk, were the last words that I wrote her. I can fly—her immortal (soaring) reply” (L1015).
Coultrap-McQuin, Susan. Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Phillips, Kate. Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.