In Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom

A chilly light pervades the empty room
bringing neither its current nor former inhabitant peace.
Rather, its immaterial lingering infests
both the air inside and what we see of the grass
outside—brittle, brown, as if it wanted to avoid the sun.
Inside, the visitor must be respectful
and polite, evasive without actually telling lies.
Everything here seems hidden—is hidden—not
just the bricked-up chimney and plastered-over doorway. Any
clue—under the wide floorboards, behind the blocked entrance—
to the haunted chambers of a heart? Patches of verse, of
old wallpaper, the main street not yet a street. What industry
motivated those uncanny dashes—these shadows
still eluding our meager efforts to scrutinize.

Credit

About this Poem

“In the spring of 2014, a number of poets were invited by the Emily Dickinson Museum to each spend an hour in her bedroom, then being restored and not open to the public. The room was empty—the bed removed, each molding numbered and dated, with only a chair and little writing desk, on which a tiny basket held a facsimile draft of Dickinson’s ‘A chilly Peace infests the Grass.’ The visitors were encouraged to write a poem inspired by this experience. It took more than a year for my inspiration to finally arrive, in the form of a sonnet that incorporated every word of the first stanza of Dickinson’s poem.”
—Lloyd Schwartz

Author

Lloyd Schwartz

Schwartz’s most recent book of poetry is Little Kisses (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He was named the Poet Laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts in 2019. In 2021, Schwartz received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

Date Published

12/10/2015