This made me think, for some reason, of Tim O'Brien's chapter on story-truth vs. happening-truth in The Things They Carried. It strikes me as a sort of tactic to be honest on the page, but only in a very specific way; one which is designed to convey the emotion of what's happening in a more universally applicable sense.

This is how I'd describe a lot of Dickinson's poems; when they do "take the top of your head off", so to speak, it's not a Michael Bay film; there are no explosions and exclamations. It's a quiet, quick sort of thing, often happening in the span of one line; and that one line usually halts me in my tracks and I have to read it once again before continuing.

How completely infuriating, and disrespectful to the legacy of one of the world's most brilliant writers. It's incredible how badly society wants to hold on to this image of Dickinson as an outcast / recluse instead of recognizing her brilliance; the fact that her sister in law had to tag on some information about Dickinson's achievements and intellect (almost as an afterthought) is really unfortunate.

It's funny, because this was my first introduction to Dickinson; I had heard about her as some strange reclusive character before I knew about the mastery of her poetry. It's unfortunate and strange that we mythologize artists in order to paint them as quirky / odd as a sort of explanation for how they were able to create work that the general public couldn't pull off.