our Next project: Emily Dickinson

I Choose just — a Crown —

Who Are You, Emily Dickinson?

This is the question we’d like to explore in our first Educational CVR production.

It’s not an easy question to answer, especially since Emily herself crafted an image of who she wanted the world to see—hiding her poems bundled in her bedroom drawers, never making them “so public like a frog,” trusting her sister would know what to do to send her words, as she wrote them, to the world that never wrote to her.

And her sister did - taking the treasure first to friend Sue and then, later, half to Mable Loomis Todd. Yes, there is history in the tales of how the poems came to publication and how scholars old and new view the Belle of Amherst, a title, I think, she would shun. But that is not our story.

our story.

Our story begins with the viewer accompanying Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the publisher Emily contacted to ask about her poetry, for an evening at one of Sue’s literary gatherings at the Evergreens, her home next door to Emily’s.

We start on the front step, notice Emily’s window, and meet Sister Sue when she opens the door to our arrival. Next, it’s into the entry way where the viewer feels the closeness of the walls, hears the piano from the parlor and Kate Jackson from the library happy that dinner can now begin. Others are introduced and then the scene changes to the dining room where the viewer is seated with Lavinia next to him and the cast happily bantering about literature and publications and Kate wanting one of Emily’s poems for a new collection. Vinnie invites everyone to dessert at the Homestead, one of Emily’s creations has been made for the occasion and then we are on the path between the houses, a poem or two that fits the weather

recited, and dessert served at the Homestead. The final scene, though, is created by Vinnie inviting the viewer up to see her sister’s room, knowing that that is an offer her guest cannot refuse. So while music and laughter drift from the parlor, the viewer is left in Emily’s room for a moment — and in that moment he can see from out the window over to sister Sue’s house and beyond to the town square - all of Amherst laid bare at the poet’s pen. Fade out.

after the story

After the story, the student returns to the classroom to discuss what he learned of the poet by visiting with those who knew her in the place where she walked.

It is a constructivist approach - provide the information and have the student mine what is there to know. And, yes, it is our view of Emily, but one we hope will be measured by the scholars who study her and used by the teachers to bring media literacy into their classrooms. Won’t you join us?