Kelli Russell Agodon‘s next book Accidental Devotions will be published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2026. Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the cohost of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard.
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Best Witchcraft is Geometry
To the magician’s mind –
His ordinary acts are feats
To thinking of mankind.
Fact Check:
I called the religious fervor that dominated Dickinson’s era the “Second Great Revival” – it’s more commonly referred to as the “Second Great Awakening.” Here’s one place to find out more. And here’s Wikipedia’s version.
A fuller version and citation for a quote I referenced: “How do most people live without any thoughts. There are so many people in the world (you must have noticed them in the street) How do they live. How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning.” (L342A, August 1870; T.W. Higginson quoting Emily Dickinson in letter to his wife)
Kelli and I were both a bit off on the “I’m out with ‘lamps’…” quote. It’s “I’m out with lanterns looking for myself.” That line comes from a letter Dickinson wrote during the time the family was moving back to the Homestead from the house they lived in when she was 9-25 years old. The house sat not far from the Main Street Homestead on North Pleasant Street, Amherst. (It no longer exists.) She was not pleased about the move at the time. She also would not get in a carriage but walked while their belongings were being transferred. Here’s more of the context the quote comes from—she’s likening it to a funeral procession and being her rye self in the process: “I cannot tell you how we moved. I had rather not remember. I believe my ‘effects’ were brought in a bandbox, and the ‘deathless me,’ on foot, not many moments after. I took at the time a memorandum of my several senses, and also of my hat and coat, and my best shoes - but it was lost in the melee, and I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” (Letter 182, January 20, 1856 to Elizabeth Holland)
I comment that Adrienne Rich “was talking about” Emily & Susan possibly being romantically involved back in the 70s. (Or, more specifically, she talks about how ignoring that possibility has stunted our interpretations of ED’s genius.) Rich’s article from 1975, “Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson,” can be found here. In the article, Rich talks about many important aspects of how Dickinson was—and in some respects still is—portrayed and the damage it does. Here is a bit from early in the article:
Virtually all criticism of this poet’s work suffers from the literary and historical silence and secrecy surrounding intense woman to woman relationships—a central element in Dickinson’s life and art; and by the assumption that she was asexual or heterosexually “sublimated.”
... [L]esbian/feminist criticism has the power to illuminate the work of any woman artist, beyond proving her a “practicing lesbian” or not. Such a criticism will ask questions hitherto passed over; will not search obsessively for heterosexual romance as the key to a woman artist’s life and work; will ask how she came to be for herself and how she identified with and was able to use women’s culture, a women’s tradition; and what the presence of other women meant in her life.
Books referenced:
The Gorgeous Nothings by Marta L. Werner and Jen Bervin. Here is a page with the book/stats on the book. Here’s a lovely page with a bit more about it and nice representation of some of the scans.
The Envelope Poems is the small, abbreviated version of Dickinson’s poems on scraps.
Other Dickinson poems referenced:
Forever – is composed of – Nows
“Forever might be short” that Kelli mentioned as her opening quote is from this one:
To love thee Year by Year —
May less appear
Than sacrifice, and cease —
However, dear,
Forever might be short, I thought to show —
And so I pieced it, with a flower, now.
People mentioned:
Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson
Kelli talks about correspondences of writers that we have and notes the “Bishop to Lowell” letters. Go to the link to learn about the book Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.
Terrance Hayes The link will take you to a Britannica article about him which I picked because you can see him wearing two watches in the picture.
Linda Bierds (University of Washington)
Places & other references:
Sylvia Beach Hotel’s Emily Dickinson Room that Kelli mentions staying in when writing her earlier book, seems to have been a victim of progress. There are still seven author-themed rooms in the newly branded “Hotel Sylvia” – Maya Angelou and Agatha Christie among them, but things look a bit more standardized. And poor Em doesn’t seem to have made the cut at all.
Some background on the Anything that Moves magazine.
The Burren is an area in County Clare, in the west of Ireland known for its unusual landscape of dissolving and porous limestone.
Maria Popova’s article about Emily & Sue’s letters can be found here. (Small note: in it, Popova mentions Susan and Austin marrying in the “fall,” however, they were married July 1st (1856)).
