Day: February 13, 2011

The photograph of Emily Dickinson’s handwritten manuscript displayed in yesterday’s post was illegible, so I offer a transcription.

*****

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

One of the literature textbooks I used the first years I taught, in the early ’70s, described Emily Dickinson as America’s greatest woman poet.

I’m ashamed to say I had to take a course in literature written by women (with a stroll through The Second Sex) before I realized the idiocy of that statement.

Emily Dickinson is America’s greatest poet.

Period.