Tiana Clark Wonders If We'll Ever Get Emily Dickinson Right

At the Washington Post, Clark traces a path from the Emily Dickinson she read in high school to the multitudinous iterations of the poet that are now permeating mass media, including, but not limited to the recent films Wild Nights With Emily and A Quiet Passion. "I remember staring at her ethereal daguerreotype, diminutive and pale, her hair parted neatly down the center with precision," Clark writes. Picking up there: 

There was a pure intensity to her large, black pupils and fragile, fawnlike neck. I was a black 16-year-old girl who hadn’t figured out how to do my own hair. I looked at 16-year-old Emily and thought I had nothing in common with that picture.

In the past several years, we’ve seen dramatic screen revisions of that virginal, saintly image. The 2016 film “A Quiet Passion” depicted the poet as very ambitious and sometimes petulant: At one point, her father complains that a plate is dirty, so she smashes it on the floor. This year came Molly Shannon’s portrayal in the comedy “Wild Nights With Emily” — a fun-loving eccentric who pursued a passionate affair with her sister-in-law, Susan. And now, most extravagantly, there’s the thoroughly modern Emily of Apple TV Plus’s new streaming series, “Dickinson.” Played by Hailee Steinfeld, she is magnetic and rebellious. She takes opium and dresses like a man to sneak into a lecture on volcanoes. She twerks at wild literary fetes, set to a soundtrack by Billie Eilish and Lizzo.

Some of these updates reflect changing literary scholarship — drawing, for example, on the research of Martha Nell Smith, who used computer imaging and infrared technology to reveal that Susan’s name had been crossed or cut out from many of Dickinson’s letters and poems. But these repeated revisions also stem from a deeper desire: We want the poet’s life to reflect our contemporary values. Her ideas resonate with us so strongly that we want to imagine a more relatable Emily, one we would understand, like and befriend if we met her today. Her poetry, which navigates the syntax and metaphysics of death and immortality, transcends its moment. Shouldn’t the poet?

Continue reading at Washington Post.