It’s the birthday of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, #diedtooyoung), whose poetry broke all sorts of rules while expressing bold and original ideas, and who is beloved by college students everywhere for the fact that nearly all (but not quite) of her poems can be sung to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, the second of three children and the daughter of a lawyer who served in the state legislature and senate and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives; basically he was Mr. Civic Responsibility. Much less is known about Dickinson’s mother, who has been described variously as passive, quirky, hardworking, and interested (at one time) in studying science. A lot more is known about Dickinson’s brother, Austin, Mr. Civic Responsibility, Jr., particularly that he married Susan Gilbert (no relation, thanks for asking) and then eventually had a long-term extramarital affair with Mabel Loomis Todd. Dickinson’s sister, Lavinia, never married and lived at home for life, as did Dickinson. Actually, Dickinson was away for one year: after studying at Amherst Academy, which she loved, Dickinson left home to study at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which she did not love, and where she had a Difference of Opinion with Principal Mary Lyon as to whether she should stand to declare her Christian beliefs. Lyon in fact officially put Dickinson in the “without hope” category as far as her faith went, along with about 30 other hopeless cases that year. That was really a thing: they had a category called “without hope.” (I would make a snarky comment but am speechless.)

Dickinson did not return to Mount Holyoke. In her twenties, she began to write more and socialize less, for reasons that have been hugely speculated upon by vast numbers of scholars. One solid reason, though, was that her mother got sick, and she and Lavinia had to spend a lot of time running the house. Another possible, less solid reason just put forth in the past few years was that she may have had epilepsy. As far as I know, nobody really knows, but I bet a lot of scholars are lobbing rocks at each other over this even as I write, and probably not lobbing them all that well. (I mean, these are scholars.) Dickinson sent many of her poems to her sis-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, who lived just down the road, and in fact after Dickinson’s death from a stroke at 55 years old, Outraged Wife Susan Gilbert Dickinson and Floozy Mistress Mabel Loomis Todd entered into a hot and furious feud over who got to be in charge of Dickinson’s poems. Long story short: Todd won but the feud was passed down to their daughters (lucky them), and scholars have been lobbing rocks on just who was the bad guy and who was the good guy and what had Dickinson thought of the whole sordid affair anyway, ever since.

At any rate, everyone agrees on this: Dickinson was a genius, and while only 10 of her poems were published before her death, the first collection of her poems, published in 1890 four years after her death, was an immediate success. Dickinson’s poem “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – ” begins:

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air –

Between the Heaves of Storm – 

(Read the full poem here.)

Have an acceptable Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.