The iconic poet's work was the inspiration for Westfield writer Everett Decker's book of haiku-style interpretations.
Everett Decker, pictured here in front of Amherst's Emily Dickinson Museum, has produced "haiku Emily!" -- a book of haiku-style interpretations of the famous poet's work. STEVE PFARRER, Daily Hampshire Gazette
AMHERST, Mass. (AP) — She's Amherst's most famous daughter, the Belle of Amherst, the iconic 19th-century recluse whose poetry is now considered to be some of the best ever penned by an American writer. Her work is taught in American literature and poetry courses from middle school to college, anthologized in myriad poetry collections, and praised for its innovative, pre-modernist rhythms.
In short, Emily Dickinson is not someone you're supposed to trifle with. Her poetry is sacrosanct, isn't it?
Well, no. As Westfield poet Everett Decker sees it, Dickinson's work is both beautiful and distinct, but it can also be difficult to approach, with its enigmatic imagery and unconventional meter. Last fall, he immersed himself in studying all of Dickinson's 1,789 poems, surrounding himself with research materials such as Noah Webster's 1844 "American Dictionary of the English Language"; he also drew on a website, the Emily Dickinson Lexicon, that's run by a Dickinson scholar in Utah.
Now Decker has produced a unique guidebook of sorts: an introduction to 125 of Dickinson's poems that he has titled "haiku Emily!" He's written haiku-style interpretations of the poems based on his own interest in haiku and Japanese philosophy and the similarities he sees between haiku and what he calls the "hymnal lyric style" of Dickinson's work.
"I wanted to find a way to make her poetry a little more accessible and less intimidating, especially to those unfamiliar with it," said Decker, 52, who discovered Dickinson's poetry when he was in middle school. "As I dug into her poems, I thought that if I could find a way to distill them into something a little more approachable, it might give readers an entry to the original work."
Just released by Small Batch Books of Amherst — Decker says he thought it only appropriate that he find an Amherst publisher — "haiku Emily!" has won a strong endorsement from Dickinson scholar Polly Longsworth, a member of the Board of Governors of the Emily Dickinson Museum and a former Amherst resident. Longsworth, who has written extensively about Dickinson, calls Decker's poetry "an amazing, brilliant body of work."
"Sometimes Everett Decker unlocks obscure Dickinson poems, sometimes he clarifies one, and sometimes he creates something entirely new," Longsworth writes about the book. "In reading both his work and Dickinson's together, I found most of the 'haiku' successful standing alone, yet the engagement with both poets made them the most meaningful to me."
The 125 poems in "haiku Emily!" are just a small portion of Decker's Dickinson-related oeuvre. He has created a haiku-influenced poem to match each of her 1,789 poems, compiling them in a thick binder that he gave to Longsworth to review earlier this year after he got to know her at various Dickinson-related events.
"Polly is very amicable, and I found out after meeting her how high up she was in the world of Dickinson scholarship," said Decker. "I felt my poems stood pretty well on their own, but I wanted to see if they would stand up to scholarly scrutiny, so I asked her if she'd give me some feedback. ... I'm very grateful for her response."
Decker, who works in information technology for the U.S. Postal Service in Springfield, has been writing poetry for years and has been published in various journals. He's hoping "haiku Emily!" will spark interest in the other 1,664 haiku interpretations he has made of Dickinson's work.
He and Trisha Thompson, co-owner of Small Batch Books, settled on the 125 poems in "haiku Emily!" as a way of both introducing readers to his work and marking the 125th anniversary of Dickinson's death in 1886. The book, available at the Emily Dickinson Museum and local bookstores, sells for a Dickinson-inspired price: $17.89.
Thompson, a former magazine editor, says she's always had an appreciation for Emily Dickinson's poetry. But she adds that she never quite understood the fascination, even reverence, that many people — particularly in Amherst — seemed to have for her work.
She wasn't quite sure what to make of Decker's poetry, either, when he approached her this past summer.
Once she began reading his poems, though, her thinking on Dickinson changed, and her appreciation for what Decker had accomplished grew. "I get it now," said Thompson. "What Everett's done is really help you find a way into her poetry, to grasping its essential meaning. I was blown away by the comparisons he'd made."
As Thompson sees it, by distilling Dickinson's poems, Decker has identified the things that made her unique and even radical for her time — stylistic touches such as the frequent use of dashes, for example, and her embrace of controversial topics, from sex to the existence of God. Her work, adds Thompson, was like something you might have seen "at a 19th-century version of a poetry slam."
Decker is quick to point out that what he has written is not strictly haiku, which in its English form typically consists of three non-rhyming lines totaling 17 or fewer syllables. Most of his poems are longer, the length generally dictated by the matching poem by Dickinson, and some include rhymes.
As he writes in the book's preface, "While a 'haiku Emily!' is neither haiku nor Emily Dickinson poetry, it is strongly influenced by both. ... I held no preconception about where a 'haiku Emily!' was going or even how it would get there, but I trusted that each would speak to me and find its voice."
The "haiku" elements of the poems include a connection to nature and minimal use of punctuation and capital letters, he adds, while the "Emily!" elements include the central images and themes of specific Dickinson poems.
His poems are untitled, like Dickinson's, each one bearing a number that links it to the corresponding Dickinson poem, which are numbered under a system developed by Dickinson scholar Ralph Franklin in the 1990s. The titles of the corresponding Dickinson poems, taken from the first line of each, are also listed with each of Decker's poems.
Some of his interpretations can be laugh-out-loud funny. Take "Did we disobey Him?" in which Dickinson wrote: "Did we disobey Him?/ Just one time!/ Charged us to forget Him-/ But we couldn't learn!/ Were Himself-such a Dunce-/ What would we-do?/ Love the dull lad-best-/ Oh, wouldn't you?"
Decker's version? "okay/there was the whole Eden thing - /get over it."
"I have so much respect and admiration for Emily Dickinson's poetry," said Decker. "I'm not trying to be provocative or presumptuous in any way."
As he writes in his preface, "I may have had to make her less reverent to make her more relevant ... (but) if even a whisper of Emily that you might not otherwise have heard comes through, then I will feel I have sung her praises as best I could."
Decker has long been devoted to Dickinson and her work. When he was 12, he heard about a Dickinson-related event in Amherst and bicycled there from Westfield — in the rain — only to discover he'd come on the wrong weekend. In recent years, he developed a renewed interest in the poet and began visiting the Emily Dickinson Museum regularly. And in September 2010, after he took part in the museum's annual Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon, at which all of her poems are read aloud, he decided to devote all his spare time to studying her work.
In addition to having more of his haiku-style poems published, Decker says he hopes they will find their way into classrooms, stimulating discussion about poetry and encouraging more students to write their own poems. He's also done book readings and has met with other Dickinson scholars. Recently he was invited to talk to the Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, a discussion group run by Dickinson scholar Margaret Freeman of Heath.
"I was a little nervous before I got up to speak," Decker said as he posed for a picture outside the Emily Dickinson Museum a few weeks ago. But, he added with a grin, "I think I passed the test."