Great American Poems REPOEMED

AuthorHouse

Contents

Emmett Lee Dickinson Emily Dickinson's Third Cousin, Twice Removed (at her request).....................2-13Poetry Of Emily & Emmett Lee Dickinson..................................................................14-58Cummings' Around Again A New Look at Some Cummings' Classics............................................59-109Frost In Translation Robert Frost's Poetry Updated for the 21st Century.................................110-117

Chapter One

Emmett Lee Dickinson, Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed (at her request), was born on October 12, 1803, in Washerst (pronounced "WAS-herst"), Pennsylvania.

Known as "the Boor of Washerst," Emmett Lee was the thirteenth of thirteen children. His father, Emery Dickinson, was an ice delivery man in Washerst (and is thought to be the inspiration for a title of a Eugene O'Neill play). His mother, Emalee Incross, was a cosmetician at the Perish & Begone Funeral Parlor, owned by brothers Eberhard and Egan Perish and Caldwell Begone.

The Dickinson family lived in the basement of the funeral parlor, and this is possibly one reason why Emmett Lee developed an intense fear of the light (heliophobia), became a recluse, and dressed almost exclusively in shades of black. His reclusiveness might also have been brought on by a sluggish liver and biliousness.

Emmett Lee Dickinson was a prolific writer of poetry, and penned such classic poems as, "After Formal Feedings, a great pain comes," "Because I could not stop for Debt," and "There's a certain slant of Art." His poetry very likely motivated and inspired the work of his third cousin, Emily.

Early years

Almost two centuries before Emmett Lee Dickinson's birth, the Dickinson family arrived in the New World. Half of the family prospered under Emily Dickinson's paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, a founder of Amherst College in Massachusetts. However, Emmett Lee Dickinson's side of the family did not fare as well. Lemuel Dickinson, Emmett Lee's paternal grandfather, struggled to make a living as a tinker, traveling from place to place mending pans, kettles, and other metal utensils.

Emmett Lee's father, Emery Dickinson, also moved from place to place and job to job as a young man. For most of Emmett Lee's youth, though, Emery settled his family in Washerst, PA, where he worked as an ice delivery man. Emery's brother Hobart owned a novelty shop in town, and he also managed an entertainment partnership with the famed ventriloquist Dooley Dawson (known to the citizens of Washerst as "Doo-Daw" Dawson) that provided clowns, magicians, and balloon artists to children's parties. Hobart often contracted Emery to provide ice for the parties and other social events in Washerst, including Washerst's annual summer festival, the Moss and Hornwort Jubilee.

Emmett Lee's mother, Emalee Incross, was a cosmetician at the Perish & Begone Funeral Parlor. Due to her relationship with the owners of the business, the Dickinson family was able to reside in the basement of the funeral parlor. In later years she contracted out her services to the various funeral parlors in the area under the name "Curl Up and Dye."

Life was not easy for the Dickinson family, and this was particularly true for young Emmett Lee. Since he was the youngest sibling, he wore the tattered clothes passed down from son to son to son to son. Since he was the smallest child, he sat at the end of the dining table and always got "what was left of what was left." Emery Dickinson tried to save on the expenses associated with having a large family, so he would often provide left-over chipped ice from his work as the family's mid-day meal. More often than not, though, the ice chips would melt before reaching young Emmett Lee, so his meal was frequently just a cold beverage.

Life was not without adventure, though. Every summer, the Clemens family from Hannibal, Missouri would visit Washerst, and Jane Clemens would hire Qwerty Anne Dickinson, Emmett Lee's oldest sister, to watch her son Samuel. As a result, Emmett Lee spent much time with young Samuel Clemens.

At first the relationship between Emmett Lee and Samuel was a bit strained, as Emmett Lee would often try to hoodwink Samuel. Once, Emmett Lee tricked Samuel into white-washing a picket fence for him. On another occasion, Emmett Lee convinced Samuel that he should sneak into a graveyard at midnight with the stiff body of a dead cat in a bag, all in an attempt to rid himself of nasty warts. After a few spats and donnybrooks, though, the two developed a friendship that lasted for many years.

During one summer visit, Emmett Lee convinced Samuel to help him fake their own deaths. They staged enough misleading and false evidence by the riverbank that the townsfolk thought the two had drowned in the Monongahela River. The two took delight when they heard cannon fire as local officials tried to raise their missing bodies from the murky bottom of the river. Later, they even snuck into their own funerals and laughed at all of the trouble they'd caused. That night, the two rafted down the Monongahela to the Ohio River to the Mississippi River. Once in Cairo, Illinois, Emmett Lee piloted a river boat up and down the Mississippi for several months under the assumed name of Emmett Lee Abagnale.

In the months following his return home, Emmett Lee spent time at Camp Wattchulukinat for Troubled Youth in Fort Crook, Nebraska. There he met the Redenbacher brothers, Orville and Wilbur, and he forged a friendship that would last for years due to their one common passion: corn. Emmett Lee was, at times, consumed by corn. He was fascinated by the many uses of corn, from food and beverage recipes to personal care and health and wellness remedies to pharmaceutical and industrial products. He was obsessed with analyzing the calendar and weather patterns associated with the planting season. He imagined the creation of a magnificent corn palace, decorated with crop art. For years he headed up letter campaigns to elected officials in towns across Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and other western states, until he finally succeeded in convincing the city elders of Mitchell, South Dakota, to build his grand and glorious Corn Palace.

Unhappytimes & failed marriages

Although Emmett Lee Dickinson always aspired to be a poet or an inventor (he had hoped to patent a mechanized corn planter in 1835 but was dismayed to learn that such a patent had been granted to Henry Blair in 1834), his first job was that as a cadaver model for his mother who worked as a cosmetician at the Perish and Begone Funeral Parlor. It was there he met Daphne Endicott who was an apprentice cosmetician working under the direction of Emmett Lee's mother.

The two fell in love, enjoyed a whirlwind romance, and married in the spring of 1822. However, the marriage fell apart when Emmett Lee discovered that Daphne was having an affair with an actual cadaver at the funeral home. Devastated, Emmett Lee filed for a quick divorce and then departed for Baltimore at the invitation of Edgar Allan Poe, a childhood friend from his days in school.

Poe played banjo, sang comical songs, and told blue jokes under the name of Izzy Sharp at a low-class theater on South Calvert Street in Baltimore. He told Dickinson that he could use a partner, so the two formed the comedy team of Izzy Sharp and Moe (they were the...