EMILY
“Again one thinks of Sade’sencyclopedic
‘120 Days of Sodom’: by Yankee ingenuity,
Dickinson is determined to add to the sum
total of imaginable human tortures.”
Camille Paglia, Sexual Persona: Art and
Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson.
it is not recorded but
nonetheless true
that Miss Dickinson
of Amerhurst sent
a screaming telegram
to the Head of
Institute of American Letters
complaining about little old me
and, considerably more gigantic,
Ms Camille Paglia
for accusing her of writing
poetry that was utterly
Dionysian and full
of sadomasochistic violence
telling them that we ought to
be brought to task for so
scandalous a misreading
be fiercely
brought to book and
really made to suffer
and if
the Institute did
not give her satisfaction
she would
take it for herself
which
in the case of poor Camille
she really did, or certainly must have
for no one
ever heard, or saw from her again
and what she did to me
she swore was perfect justice
ripping out my eyeballs over
her slim, slim, slim beloved volume
of every poem
you were taught at
school
those days
and other classics
of her selected works
and over every line, every word, every phrase
every bloody, bloody page
she
did run those eyeballs
shrieking: now tell me, now tell
where
in all my poetry that is not
peace and love and pretty Nature
where
is anything that might not
equally be found in
the pages of Wordsworth
tell me
you bastard
tell me now