I Listened to 1,789 Emily Dickinson Poems in a Week

Here's what I learned

Michael J. Virzi’s A Poetic Dialogue, mysteriously missing Robert Frost

1,789 poems. Sixteen hours. One week. This meant poems while I worked and ate and thought and listened, listened, listened.

The cornerstone of the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon. In seven sessions spread over the course of a week, a group of volunteers read every single one of Emily Dickinson’s 1,789 poems as part of a free hybrid event connecting Amherst locals with poetry lovers all over the world.

What happens to your brain when you listen to that much poetry in a compressed timeframe? I wanted to find out!

During the week, I thought a lot about the musicality of language itself. The readers kept up a steady stream of poetry throughout each session, each one blending fluidly into the next. I’ve written before about the fact that I almost always have something playing in the background. (Usually different playlists with different intent: working, driving, writing, collecting memories.) In this case, I found that listening to a constant flow of Emily’s work could generate an almost trancelike state at times. There’s a particular cadence to her poems that borders on hypnotic, very meditative and calming.

My favorite side effect? I started paying more attention to the poetry of everyday language. Because so many of Emily’s poems are untitled, she jumps right into stating her observations without the stop-and-start declaration of a title, more closely imitating the flow of regular dialogue. Conversational small talk about the weather especially reminded me of Emily’s many reflections on nature — sometimes I felt line breaks were the only thing missing.

I don’t think the emails or conversations of this last week were any more poetic than usual — though I do work in books! — but I was reading and listening differently in every aspect of my life because of all that poetry. This made me think a lot about how one’s personal outlook can be totally reshaped by what you choose to consume (like when people talk about “thinking in Tweets” because of so much time spent on social media).

I liked Emily Dickinson well enough before the festival, but by the end, my relationship to her work had changed. I’ve always loved drawing connections between an artist’s different projects as I make my way through their work, identifying unique interests and obsessions. (Example: I noticed Emily writes a lot about 1) bees — oh my god, so many bees! — and 2) immortality. Her RANGE.) And now, when I read her poetry in the future, I’m always going to remember this particular last week of September. The early fall weather, the changing colors of the leaves.

I think Emily would’ve liked that.

Visiting Emily’s home

Another point of curiosity: What measurable effects, if any, does poetry have on its readers? In the past, I’d looked into The Science of Scare Project, which records the physical effects of horror films on viewers. On a less frightening note, I was curious whether any similar studies had occurred in the realm of poetry.

Turns out the answer is yes! This 2022 CNN piece collects and distills a few noteworthy examples, linked by the observation that interaction with poetry — writing it, reading it, listening to it — seems to relieve stress, or at the very least distract from it. (Anecdotally based on the last week, can confirm!)

I kept thinking about David Haosen Xiang and Alisha Moon Yi’s article, “A Look Back and a Path Forward,” which specifically explored poetry’s capacity for combating loneliness during the early stages of the pandemic. Emily herself is culturally notorious for her love of solitude. But in her writing, you can see she was so connected. To her family, to nature, to language. And of course, her poetry has gone on to link countless readers in all the intervening decades.

I kept coming back to this idea of community across time and space over the course of the marathon. Even though so many of us were tuning in from so many different places, we were all linked by our admiration for the work of one singular poet. Listening together, sending bee emojis in the chat, cheering for the greatest hits. I’ve long been grateful for this particular fact of fandom: a built-in community, a shared passion, a context that needs no explanation. In my experience, being a fan has rarely ever felt lonely.

As poem after poem was read, I returned to the image of solitary Emily, jotting down a poem late at night on an envelope’s corner at her little writing desk. I wonder what she thought might become of these words, scribbled in moments of quiet inspiration. Did she have any idea that well over a century later, we’d all be here, reading them together?

Just a few options from the library catalog…

My Recommended Emilies

Recipes, a tarot deck, a documentary, a few books, and my favorite of her poems:

• Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them: Fun fact: Emily sometimes provided alternate word choices in her poetry. (As someone whose writing weakness is using multiple adjectives, RELATABLE.) This collection is notable for its effort to preserve those variations. As a result, the poems invite the reader’s interpretation and choice-making in a really cool way.

• My Letter to the World: A Journey Through the Life of Emily Dickinson: If you want a rundown of Emily’s life and legacy, Sol Papadopoulos’ documentary is a great place to start. I had no idea there was so much drama around the publication of her poems, but turns out it was a Whole Thing.

• The Emily Dickinson Tarot Deck: I came across this deck at the Emily Dickinson Museum last year, and it’s such a thoughtful marriage of art and language. Five artists got together to collaborate on a deck inspired by Emily’s poetry, highlighting the imagery of her work through classic tarot archetypes. Beautiful and functional.

• Emily Dickinson Face to Face: A wholly unique perspective on Emily written by her niece, first published in 1932 and subsequently out of print for most of the last century, until last year. Of all the scholarship on Emily (and there’s a lot of it), how many of the writers can attest firsthand to her qualities as a babysitter?

• The Emily Dickinson Cookbook: A bunch of recipes that were either favorites of Emily herself or inspired by her work — poems included. Cannot wait to make Winter Garden Vegetable Soup.

• The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems: Detailed, full-color scans of the poems Emily jotted down on envelope scraps — the next best thing to physically visiting an archive.

• “Because I could not stop for Death —”: Out of all 1,789, this one’s my favorite!

Thanks for reading, y’all! If you’re interested in staying in the loop on future Emily Dickinson Museum news and events (like next year’s festival), you can sign up for their newsletter here. See you again in October!