First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

filed in Myths and stereotypes

Is It Okay to Choose to be Alone?

May 18, 2010 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Can it be that I started First Person Singular over a year ago, and this is my first mention of Emily Dickinson? (This image, above, is the only confirmed photograph, taken when she was 16 or 17.) DON’T MISS reading Holland Cotter’s very personal and moving piece in the Times exploring the Dickinson mythos, My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst. Here’s an excerpt:

But why do we so badly need to have this poet paired off with someone? Why do we need to make a failure in love — and because Dickinson was single, failure is always assumed — the explanation for her art? We don’t consider “Walden” or “Moby Dick” or “Leaves of Grass” the products of amorous psychopathology. Yet the notion lingers that Dickinson’s poetry was a disturbed response to some unfulfilled need, her retirement a symptom of sickness.

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