But in 2023 I upgraded my computer and its software, and rerunning the restoration now brings back so much more history that separate pages can be seen once again in the book on the photographer’s table. If I still had the Microsoft Word text of my own 2021 book, I’d replace the old image there with the new one and hit Republish. The Word text is long deleted, though, and to change that one page now I’d have to retype the whole book and then hassle with Issuu.
Emily Dickinson
Dickinson: in mitigation
What Randall Jarrell said about Robert Frost is also true of Emily Dickinson: her best poems are almost as beloved as her worst. But here’s some scholarship in mitigation.
First the poem: Fr982, as it usually is formatted online.
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Second, historical evidence for the genteel pronunciation of “again.” In the sequence beginning at about minute 18:30 of
you’ll hear it: “eggayne.”
Third and decisively, artificial intelligence has motored up at last with aid for the fainting robin. Perhaps the stretcher bearer was Ernest Hemingway.
Where it came from
Observation at coarse focus: metaphor’s long operating distance
The metaphor: by Emily Dickinson, Fr741.
Its point of view is behind thick, scream-deadening glass, and the glass is nineteenth-century windowpane, wavy and bubbly. If it were optical glass, you would see, instead,
or, with a click of a rotating turret
Then full stop. Observe the yellow eye afterward, too, if you choose, but your only humbly honest recourse is probably not to dare to think about it.
Sunkist: the myth of Clytie
Punctuate

Miss Dickinson slakes her hunger

Triple footnote: the senses of sight, touch and silence

Gloss

Silver Practise: The 1847 Daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson
That’s the title of my new (and free) Issuu photobook about (1) photoshopping the only known photograph of Dickinson to bring out detail, and then (2) thinking about what then makes itself seen. Click here: