Note: Originally posted Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Brockton Post
BROCKTON—Music fans may know why country singer Johnny Cash began to wear all black clothes, but according to experts, no one knows why legendary Amherst poet Emily Dickinson began to appear in nearly all white clothing—an unanswered question that has nagged at Dickinson’s followers for more than a century.
“There are many myths and legends surrounding Emily Dickinson and her life,” said
Emily Dickinson Museum Executive Director Jane Wald, “but it is true she had some eccentricities,” Wald said.
Wald will be one guest speaker for a nearly two-months long immersion in the life and works of Emily Dickinson and the expressive nature of poetry during “The Big Read,” a program initiated by the Fuller Craft Museum and paid for by a $6,500 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Fuller Craft Museum Education Director Noelle Foye said the museum also had to match the grant dollar-for-dollar.
The museum has teamed with Brockton Public Library, Massasoit Community College, Greater Brockton Society for the Arts and Poetry, and the Boys and Girls Club of Brockton to bring the extensive program to the community.
“It’s not just reading her work, there will be performances, workshops, readings, bookmaking and art projects,” Foye said.
“She’s a local girl and a lot of her writing is centered around the universal themes of adolescence,” she said.
The Fuller is one of 75 organizations in the U.S. that has received a “Big Read” grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, which has partnered with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with ArtsMidwest to bring the reading program to communities across the country.
Big Read is an initiative that tries to increase literacy and the love of reading in adults and especially children.
Each community chooses a book, author or poet, in Brockton’s case, Dickinson, to concentrate on and build programs around.
Foye said the Emily Dickinson blitz begins Saturday, Oct. 16 at the Brockton Public Library from 1 to 5 p.m. with an event for teens that includes learning to use Twitter to write poems, working with poets from the Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts, listening to local celebrities read their favorite poetry and watching a video of a teenage poet struggling with issues of love, independence and feminism.
“This is intended to be a community-wide event and we hope people of all ages and backgrounds will join us,” Foye said.
The grant also provides for books and reading materials for Brockton classrooms and libraries.
Emily Dickinson Museum Executive Director Wald will be in Brockton at the Fuller Craft Nov. 13 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. to talk about the controversy, myths and legend of Emily Dickinson.
“She really is attractive to teens and young adults because she writes about the issues that they are going through,” Wald said. “She battled perceived notions…she questioned everything, especially religion…teens and young adults are completely in the middle of that,” she said.
And then there is the eccentricities.
“We don’t know why, but when she was in her mid-30s she began to wear white, or nearly all white,” Wald said.
Dickinson, whose popularity did not take flight until after her death in 1886 because very few poems were published, became increasingly reclusive as she aged, Wald said, and lately more and more scholars are seeking answers about her life.
“She’s really hot right now,” Wald said, noting numerous articles and books are being published about Dickinson. “It’s her cultural moment in the 21st Century. Take a look at her poetry and find out what all the fuss is about,” she said.
Several of the programs will include translations in Spanish, French and Cape Verde. For a calendar of events and specific dates when translators will be available, please visit
Fuller Craft Museum’s Big Read Emily Dickinson page.
(Photo courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections)
BrocktonPost
