Bluestalking

Billy Collins, "Re-Interviewed"

Phone conversation yesterday:

BSR: Hello?

BC: This is Billy Collins. I got your message about Tuesday.

BSR: Sorry?

BC: You left me a message that today would be a good time to talk, for our interview?

BSR: Umm, actually we did that interview a few weeks ago.

BC: Oh, sorry. Your message just came through today.

BSR: It's nice hearing from you, anyway.

BC: Did we have a nice interview?

BSR: Yes, yes we did.

BC: Well, thanks then. Bye.

Does this mean you've arrived when Poets Laureate call your house when you aren't expecting them to, or does it just prove he really could use a vacation?

I'm going with the former.

Once Upon a Halloween Dreary

Workers employed at the former Amherst, MA home of poet Emily Dickinson found something very surprising, while digging in her front yard in an effort to improve water drainage at the estate. They dug up more than they bargained for when their shovels hit what turned out to be a headstone. Though it was broken into several pieces, once they pieced the marble together they found it had belonged to one General Thomas Gilbert, a relative of Emily Dickinson's.

Though Gen. Gilbert is actually buried in a nearby cemetery, somehow his original tombstone turned up in the front yard of Dickinson's house. How, exactly, that transpired no one seems to know, but it's indisputable what they found was a genuine literary curiosity.

Gilbert's daughter became Emily Dickinson's sister-in-law when she married Emily's brother, Austin, in 1856.  The daughter of a tavern owner, Susan Gilbert endured a lifetime of disapproval due to the fact her father's profession was anything but respectable. How society must have dogged the poor woman.

The only thing more appropriate than this real-life mystery would be finding a tombstone in the front yard of Edgar Allen Poe. Finding a mysterious tombstone in the front yard of a literary icon on Halloween, though, is interesting no matter whose yard it is.

A poem by Emily Dickinson:

Part Four: Time and Eternity

LIII

DEATH sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little workmanships	5
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until
The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,	10
And then ’t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,—	15
At rest his fingers are.
Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.	20

How many other secrets has Emily Dickinson kept? She was such an enigma, but there's always hope we'll keep stumbling upon these little curiosities, or better yet, more answers to the questions we all have about the reclusive Belle of Amherst.