BY JOELLEN COLLINS
Emily Dickinson, an original American poet, did not desire fame, though she wrote hundreds of poems and did seek the approval of those close to her. Although she requested that her poems NOT be published posthumously, her body of work received unwanted public attention. Ironically, this betrayal of her need for privacy has allowed generations to enjoy her work.
Her whimsical punctuation and use of slant rhyme in conveying the solitary human she was is surely respected in spite of her underlying shyness about her art.
Today, her choice of relative anonymity and living as a recluse seems even more strange in a world obsessed with the quest for instant fame and the adulation of celebrity that ensues.
One poem most clearly expresses her view. She said:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
I admit to being raised to think I was “somebody.” To my parents, married for 10 years before they adopted me, I was indeed a princess. Being on the radio with my father, entertaining my parents’ friends after dinner, and exhibiting an innate joy in telling stories meant that people often paid even undeserved attention to me. I am ashamed now to think how much time I spent in the limelight, and still must quell my ham instincts. However, a long life has given me a wider perspective. My most beautiful moments are often private and sometimes solitary.
One of my friends was a magical listener. People were drawn to her and enjoyed conversing with her because she always responded in a positive manner, smiling, looking closely at the speaker, and never dominating the room. I admired her for the same reason I do the lovely Emily Dickinson – for her modesty and her ability to be still and listen to an inner voice that shone through the quietness of her persona.
Rereading Emily reminds me of the beauty of silence, of the self-effacing “nobody” who created without fanfare or applause haunting images and the perceptions of an extraordinary mind.
May the women I observe on TV and the Internet stripping themselves of dignity in order to be noticed take a few moments to reflect on a woman of another time whose life had meaning and spirit without the social media exposure, klieg lights, and reality television which panders to our basest instincts.
Oh, yes, I once desired to play Emily Dickinson in “The Belle of Amherst.” Now, with some late-life wisdom, perhaps I can be “someone” inside rather than a noisy frog croaking for attention. I may not always succeed, but will keep reading the poetry of a brilliant woman who chronicled her experience of being “nobody” to the world but who was “somebody” of true value in her life and legacy.
