"This is the moment; forget all I've done ~"
So, it’s probably weird that I haven’t posted about Emily Dickinson yet, she being from Amherst, MA. Truth be told I’m not that into her. I mean, she’s fine, just not the rollicking good time that most of the other big names from the mid-19th century are, in my head. But those of you who know I love Kay Ryan will understand why I do like some of Emily Dickinson’s stuff - just check out this one:
“'Faith' is a fine invention'
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see-
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Here’s another with a well-known opening phrase.
[excerpt from] “Because I could not stop for Death”
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
So that gives you an idea. She’s from Amherst - I went to her house museum last year, did the tour and later wrote up an annoying but pretty thoughtful
response paper.
Review of the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst, MA
When Emily Dickinson wrote of a “Mansion of the Universe” (poem 836), she may have been inspired by an attractive family house on Main Street in Amherst, MA. Now owned by the Trustees of Amherst College and surrounded by trees a block away from the town center, the Emily Dickinson Homestead, along with the estate of Emily’s brother Austin, functions as a house museum. It provides a ninety-minute introduction to Emily Dickinson to new students of her life and poetry, as well as a pilgrimage destination for the veteran fan. Having visited in the autumn of 2011, I left Emily’s house with some sense of how museums may achieve a lot with comparatively little - and perhaps with some sense of how more yet can be attempted. In the interest of space, this essay will focus on the Emily Dickinson Homestead, with only an informed eye towards the neighboring Evergreens estate.
Perhaps because of the sparseness of the Homestead collection currently on display, whether or not the 19th century household has been re-created is not at stake. Unlike the dimly-lit Evergreens, so full of original family items that it had a “repository” feel when I visited, the Homestead holds mostly item replicas, Dickinson-period substitutes for objects we know existed at one point, and twentieth-century refurbishments. Undoubtedly some visitors find it disappointing to learn that Emily’s famous white dress is a few blocks away at the Amherst Historical Society Museum, or that the original Dickinson library is housed at Houghton Library. However, there are more constructive ways of evaluating a house museum than to bemoan what is not there.
No museum can simply transplant a household of items into the present, even in period rooms or with original items, so it may be more helpful to consider the stories with which the Emily Dickinson Museum threads together the artifacts and material representations it possesses. The stories, imparted by my tour’s practiced guide, pivoted on a number of photo and daguerreotype reprints framed on mantels and walls. The images are uncaptioned but effective components of the tour; unfortunately the selection of stories, from the provincial games Emily played with the neighborhood children to the sense of family harmony and slight exaggeration of her father’s wealth, create a simplistic look at the poet’s domestic life.
While the tour clearly is aimed to introduce visitors to its subject and not flesh out the details of family dynamics, the mention of a few familial complications would have made the anecdotes more relatable. For example, as we stood around a photo of a building formerly located on Pleasant Street where the Dickinsons had sojourned, it was only mentioned in passing that they originally left Main Street because of financial troubles. Instead the tour emphasized their triumphant return years later, the “reclaiming of the family legacy.” The facts that Emily was distraught upon her return to what is now the Homestead, and that she was dearly attached to the Pleasant Street house, a house that yielded comparatively little poetic output from her pen, slipped by the tour without comment.
In examples such as these, I believe the museum presentation fails to situate Emily effectively within the Main Street house itself. The stories of what the homestead meant to the poet (or didn’t mean, at times) matters immensely, along with other less-tangibles. Perhaps in a house museum crowded with things - such as the Evergreens - the experience of visitors is less concentrated upon the shoulders of the tour guide and his script or spoken narrative. However, at the time of writing, this is not the case with the modest collection currently on display at the Homestead.
In addition to the matter of narrative anecdotes, I was disappointed by the museum’s handling of physical open area. The scarcity of truly significant original family items in some rooms of the Homestead should have provided the Museum with an avenue for a more nuanced discussion of the space of the house. After all, the space in which Emily Dickinson resided was as important to her as most of her things. Today she is strongly associated with her residency at her father’s house; her existence within the walls of the Homestead is the legacy with which most of her first-time museum visitors are most likely already familiar. I would have liked to see this legacy explored in the museum. For example, the two parlor rooms of the house are frankly less captivating than, say, Emily’s bedroom, because they are not bejeweled with original family artifacts or arranged in any convincing way. Two square, modern-looking rugs anchor the furniture, which mostly faces away from the fireplace. Dorm-style lamps stand behind them, along with a conspicuous air purifier. But the jolt of modernity could be assimilated, or at least diverted, by a simple reference to the space of the room - such as the doorways behind which Emily would sit hidden and speak to her family guests from the hallway. Whatever one wishes about the things in the museum, the individual locations in which Emily lived, and performed her daily tasks, are quite authentic.
Space itself is so prevalent in her poems as well, appearing as bare floors and shadows, windows and light, that the development of this theme within the museum would also allow the discussion of her poetry to be more smoothly woven into the narrative of the house tour. When I attended, her actual words were presented mostly as stand-alone quotes announced ceremoniously, and later as part of an engaging but ultimately self-contained classroom style discussion at the very end of the tour.
In a longer assessment, one could easily counter any complaints about the Emily Dickinson Homestead with a laundry list of things the museum does very well. My tour guide, Greg Mattingly, balanced his polished performance (speaking with the nostalgia of an old friend as he gazed at object replicas with us, or asking the group questions about the Dickinsons and then answering himself with a theatric quotation) with more candid discussions that created a sense of tour group camaraderie. The museum has also made the most of its high-ticket items: the dress replica is presented at the top of a stairway in a pool of sunlight, in front of a window stained with images of falling pastel leaves. Emily’s room, comprised mostly of original family items, is simply and neatly arranged, which must resonate well with visitors familiar with her economic use of language.
Ultimately, the areas in which I find room for improvement at the Emily Dickinson Homestead are in part matters of preference, areas vulnerable to any strong opinions about the way literary figures are presented in collection displays and public tours. It is important to note, however, that a surface legacy of Emily Dickinson is introduced quite well, and the museum is ideally toured in conjunction with the Evergreens (a drastically different environment and set of stories to be told than in the Emily Dickinson house). Standing alone, the Homestead is well-kept and run with a desirable balance of personality and professionalism, and as discussed it executes the stories its management has selected competently with the artifacts it contains. If we relinquish those optimistic notions of being transported to the 19th century, and of taking a deeply nuanced look at the author herself, the museum is an effective venue for a ninety-minute consideration of Emily Dickinson’s world.
Highlighted for your convenience. A professor in the department passed it along to the museum directors, although I never learned if they… well, gave a shit.
Last year Alex and I went to an old cemetery in Amherst Center to hunt down her grave, which I knew was in a family plot but had never seen before.
Now, when I photograph Thoreau’s grave, I try to mask the fact that people leave inordinate amounts of crap there on his grave. I’m not above picking through them, either. Someone’s in charge of carting away the trash (sorry, that’s what it is) regularly, and I’m always glad when I visit when this has been done recently.
The caretakers of Emily’s cemetery have solved the trash-on-the-grave issue by putting up a hand-made, crumbling old wooden box that has a plastic page protector inside. So rather than litter her grave with their bad poetry, heartfelt letters, gum wrappers, or whatever, they open the little door to the left of her grave and deposit their offerings in a more confined, unobtrusive space. I love this.
And there you have it! Later days.
“'Faith' is a fine invention'
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see-
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Here’s another with a well-known opening phrase.
[excerpt from] “Because I could not stop for Death”
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
So that gives you an idea. She’s from Amherst - I went to her house museum last year, did the tour and later wrote up an annoying but pretty thoughtful
response paper.
Review of the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst, MA
When Emily Dickinson wrote of a “Mansion of the Universe” (poem 836), she may have been inspired by an attractive family house on Main Street in Amherst, MA. Now owned by the Trustees of Amherst College and surrounded by trees a block away from the town center, the Emily Dickinson Homestead, along with the estate of Emily’s brother Austin, functions as a house museum. It provides a ninety-minute introduction to Emily Dickinson to new students of her life and poetry, as well as a pilgrimage destination for the veteran fan. Having visited in the autumn of 2011, I left Emily’s house with some sense of how museums may achieve a lot with comparatively little - and perhaps with some sense of how more yet can be attempted. In the interest of space, this essay will focus on the Emily Dickinson Homestead, with only an informed eye towards the neighboring Evergreens estate.
Perhaps because of the sparseness of the Homestead collection currently on display, whether or not the 19th century household has been re-created is not at stake. Unlike the dimly-lit Evergreens, so full of original family items that it had a “repository” feel when I visited, the Homestead holds mostly item replicas, Dickinson-period substitutes for objects we know existed at one point, and twentieth-century refurbishments. Undoubtedly some visitors find it disappointing to learn that Emily’s famous white dress is a few blocks away at the Amherst Historical Society Museum, or that the original Dickinson library is housed at Houghton Library. However, there are more constructive ways of evaluating a house museum than to bemoan what is not there.
No museum can simply transplant a household of items into the present, even in period rooms or with original items, so it may be more helpful to consider the stories with which the Emily Dickinson Museum threads together the artifacts and material representations it possesses. The stories, imparted by my tour’s practiced guide, pivoted on a number of photo and daguerreotype reprints framed on mantels and walls. The images are uncaptioned but effective components of the tour; unfortunately the selection of stories, from the provincial games Emily played with the neighborhood children to the sense of family harmony and slight exaggeration of her father’s wealth, create a simplistic look at the poet’s domestic life.
While the tour clearly is aimed to introduce visitors to its subject and not flesh out the details of family dynamics, the mention of a few familial complications would have made the anecdotes more relatable. For example, as we stood around a photo of a building formerly located on Pleasant Street where the Dickinsons had sojourned, it was only mentioned in passing that they originally left Main Street because of financial troubles. Instead the tour emphasized their triumphant return years later, the “reclaiming of the family legacy.” The facts that Emily was distraught upon her return to what is now the Homestead, and that she was dearly attached to the Pleasant Street house, a house that yielded comparatively little poetic output from her pen, slipped by the tour without comment.
In examples such as these, I believe the museum presentation fails to situate Emily effectively within the Main Street house itself. The stories of what the homestead meant to the poet (or didn’t mean, at times) matters immensely, along with other less-tangibles. Perhaps in a house museum crowded with things - such as the Evergreens - the experience of visitors is less concentrated upon the shoulders of the tour guide and his script or spoken narrative. However, at the time of writing, this is not the case with the modest collection currently on display at the Homestead.
In addition to the matter of narrative anecdotes, I was disappointed by the museum’s handling of physical open area. The scarcity of truly significant original family items in some rooms of the Homestead should have provided the Museum with an avenue for a more nuanced discussion of the space of the house. After all, the space in which Emily Dickinson resided was as important to her as most of her things. Today she is strongly associated with her residency at her father’s house; her existence within the walls of the Homestead is the legacy with which most of her first-time museum visitors are most likely already familiar. I would have liked to see this legacy explored in the museum. For example, the two parlor rooms of the house are frankly less captivating than, say, Emily’s bedroom, because they are not bejeweled with original family artifacts or arranged in any convincing way. Two square, modern-looking rugs anchor the furniture, which mostly faces away from the fireplace. Dorm-style lamps stand behind them, along with a conspicuous air purifier. But the jolt of modernity could be assimilated, or at least diverted, by a simple reference to the space of the room - such as the doorways behind which Emily would sit hidden and speak to her family guests from the hallway. Whatever one wishes about the things in the museum, the individual locations in which Emily lived, and performed her daily tasks, are quite authentic.
Space itself is so prevalent in her poems as well, appearing as bare floors and shadows, windows and light, that the development of this theme within the museum would also allow the discussion of her poetry to be more smoothly woven into the narrative of the house tour. When I attended, her actual words were presented mostly as stand-alone quotes announced ceremoniously, and later as part of an engaging but ultimately self-contained classroom style discussion at the very end of the tour.
In a longer assessment, one could easily counter any complaints about the Emily Dickinson Homestead with a laundry list of things the museum does very well. My tour guide, Greg Mattingly, balanced his polished performance (speaking with the nostalgia of an old friend as he gazed at object replicas with us, or asking the group questions about the Dickinsons and then answering himself with a theatric quotation) with more candid discussions that created a sense of tour group camaraderie. The museum has also made the most of its high-ticket items: the dress replica is presented at the top of a stairway in a pool of sunlight, in front of a window stained with images of falling pastel leaves. Emily’s room, comprised mostly of original family items, is simply and neatly arranged, which must resonate well with visitors familiar with her economic use of language.
Ultimately, the areas in which I find room for improvement at the Emily Dickinson Homestead are in part matters of preference, areas vulnerable to any strong opinions about the way literary figures are presented in collection displays and public tours. It is important to note, however, that a surface legacy of Emily Dickinson is introduced quite well, and the museum is ideally toured in conjunction with the Evergreens (a drastically different environment and set of stories to be told than in the Emily Dickinson house). Standing alone, the Homestead is well-kept and run with a desirable balance of personality and professionalism, and as discussed it executes the stories its management has selected competently with the artifacts it contains. If we relinquish those optimistic notions of being transported to the 19th century, and of taking a deeply nuanced look at the author herself, the museum is an effective venue for a ninety-minute consideration of Emily Dickinson’s world.
Highlighted for your convenience. A professor in the department passed it along to the museum directors, although I never learned if they… well, gave a shit.
Last year Alex and I went to an old cemetery in Amherst Center to hunt down her grave, which I knew was in a family plot but had never seen before.
Now, when I photograph Thoreau’s grave, I try to mask the fact that people leave inordinate amounts of crap there on his grave. I’m not above picking through them, either. Someone’s in charge of carting away the trash (sorry, that’s what it is) regularly, and I’m always glad when I visit when this has been done recently.
The caretakers of Emily’s cemetery have solved the trash-on-the-grave issue by putting up a hand-made, crumbling old wooden box that has a plastic page protector inside. So rather than litter her grave with their bad poetry, heartfelt letters, gum wrappers, or whatever, they open the little door to the left of her grave and deposit their offerings in a more confined, unobtrusive space. I love this.
And there you have it! Later days.