Matt Donovan is the author most recently of We Are Not Where We Are (Bull City Press, 2025) which was co-authored with Jenny George, and The Dug-Up Gun Museum (BOA 2022). He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. Donovan serves as the director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.
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The poem as Matt read it and as we discussed it appears as below (which is what you’ll find on the poets.org site from The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson).
Empty my heart of thee —
Its single artery,
Begin to leave thee out —
Simply extinction’s date.Much billow hath the seam
One Baltic — they,
Subtract thyself, in play,
And not enough of me
Is left to put away —
“Myself” meant thee.Erase the root, no tree ;
Thee — then no me —
The Heavens stripped,
Eternity’s wide pocket picked.
Below is the version in Thomas Johnson’s 1955 The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. (You’ll see there are a couple differences – one very significant one in the first line of the second stanza considering my conversation with Matt!)
Empty my Heart, of Thee —
Its single Artery,
Begin, and leave thee out —
Simply Extinction’s Date –Much Billow hath the Sea –
One Baltic — They –
Subtract thyself, in play,
And not enough of me
Is left – to put away —
“Myself” meant Thee –Erase the Root – no Tree –
Thee — then – no me —
The Heavens stripped –
Eternity’s vast pocket, picked –
The View from Under Emily Dickinson’s Bed
Matt Donovan“The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst rents out
the poet’s bedroom where she wrote.”—New England Public Radio
Some chair legs and the legs of the provided writing desk
you ignored. Several inches of wallpaper vine tangle
and pink roses clustered just above the room’s cream trim.
The heating vent’s grid with its darkness divided into
little squares and the pleated hem of the white dress worn
by a headless mannequin intended as a stand-in for the poet.
Isn’t this what you wanted? To pay for an hour alone
in this room, and then, for reasons you never tried to name,
shimmy-shove your way beneath after the docent leaves?
To be scrunched, wedged between floor and slats, badass
and weird-ass all at once, craning your neck, taking it in.
Maybe don’t sweat the low-hanging why-am-I-doing-this
that comes knocking if you let it. You’ve made a strange choice,
but that’s more than OK, and now this is where you are,
unsure where to place your hands or what to do with everything
you can see from within this cramped space you chose.
Other Dickinson poems referenced:
The Installment:
Art installment at the Dickinson Homestead (Amherst, Massachusetts) by Matt Donovan and Ligia Bouton: “A Something Overtakes the Mind.”
Matt notes the help of Megan Ramsey, Emily Dickinson Museum Collections Manager. Here is a short introductory video about her background and her work cataloguing the collection and managing the warehouse. You’ll be able to find other videos online produced by the museum that look at various pieces held by the museum but that are not necessarily displayed to the public. In addition, on the website, you can virtually look through the collection of objects owned by the museum, from Dickinson’s shawl to tea cups to her nephew’s banjo…
People mentioned in the interview:
James Wright, his book The Branch Will Not Break
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