What Would Emily Dickinson Do?

...Said No One Ever—not even me when I started this rural life diary at the time that I was reading through her complete poems!

But during this five-year transition of urban-to-rural living—and all the reasons why it has been simultaneously glorious and challenging—I’ve come to wonder what Emily Dickinson would think of the world and its condition today? How would she feel about the deep disregard for and destruction of our natural world by many, about what has become of American culture, about global politics and economics, about interpersonal relationships (online dating!) and the overall weight and influence of social media? What would she think about our food system, our urban sprawl and rural decay, healthcare, even the state of contemporary poetry?

Emily, as I know her through her own writing and what other people have written about her, was a sensitive soul. She was a homebody, a gardener, an interested learner, a diligent reader, a decent baker, a devoted letter writer, a wry social observer, a sometimes traveler, and seemingly, a sweet and loving friend, sister, daughter, and at times, a flirt. She felt things deeply, about humans and about and through the natural world—birds, flowers, bees, and other living beings that she observed. She documented her thoughts about love and duty and had a devotional way of pursuing her days, perhaps grounded in her family’s actual churchgoing and beliefs, but in ways that transcend organized religion. She seemed to possess a spiritual reverence for the natural world that prompted me, five years ago, to contemplate the beginning of one of her poems, and from it, fashion a moniker for this place that we currently keep here in the Upper Hudson Valley—Rowdy of the Meadow.

When I speculate on what Emily Dickinson might think and feel about today’s world, I often wonder what— provided she could emotionally survive our era—she would do?

Emily Dickinson in 2024 would remain present and discerning, despite whatever pain the world delivers. She would likely capture in words the ongoing beauty and sweetness that persists in people and in places. She would retain a sense of wonder, but refuse to suffer nonsense. Emily Dickinson would strive to know her own thoughts in response to her surroundings and what she observes in others and in the conditions of living today, and then communicate them. She would apply herself to improving the lot of her community, friends and loved ones. That’s what she did then, though the world, and her privilege to live as an observer in it, was strikingly different than it is today.

Despite her introverted qualities, Dickinson was an early feminist voice, evident in the way that her writing defied the rigid Victorian world she inhabited. Her work, still relevant and subversive, inspires me to keep considering her, not in isolation from other writers and thinkers past and present, but in tandem with them. Rowdy of the Meadow is fundamentally a lens for thinking, writing and conversing in spirit with Dickinson—and so many others. You included.

Rowdy of the Meadow is an ongoing letter to the world.

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me
(Dickinson, The Complete Poems, 441)

—Lynn Love