Poetry Friday--A Mighty Room

One of the sessions I attended at the Mass Poetry Festival at the end of April was a reading of poems from a slim volume titled, A Mighty Room: A Collection of Poems Written in Emily Dickinson's Bedroom, edited by Michael Medeiros. I purchased a copy so that I could read the poems of all 26 contributing poets.

This is from the back cover:

During spring and summer 2014, poets were invited into Emily Dickinson's bedroom--the creative space in which she wrote nearly all her poems--while it was in the midst of a major restoration. With its twentieth-century additions removed, the room presented these writers with a fleeting opportunity to immerse themselves in Dickinson' raw, intimate nineteenth-century surrounding; to walk her floors, look out her windows, and use it as she had. This book is the result of their experiences.

To learn more about the restoration project, click here.

Here are the first three stanzas (of seven) of a poem that spoke to me:

Morning in Emily's Room
by Douglas Korb

How public to sit in this window
engaging the pine, with the mistress
not at home. The best kept secrets once

stuffed in the drawers. How the squirrels
scurry their fears into the hollows
and the rabbits squeeze through

the fence where the pine's new fingers
turn their green to sky as if all things be
praised. What is watched is worried upon.

...

I checked the Emily Dickinson Museum website to see if there are copies of A Mighty Room available for purchase, but alas, they are not listed in the "Shop." (You might try emailing info@EmilyDickinsonMuseum if you'd like to locate a copy for you own library.)

This short video was filmed prior to the restoration:



Jone at Check It Out will be hosting the Poetry Friday Round-Up for this week.