Emily D. shares with Papa Hemingway title of "Most Famous Most Misunderstood American Writer."
Please read Joyce Carol Oates' new book "Wild Nights!" for brilliant portraits of Papa and The Little Wren.
A few of Emily's personae: vampire, volcano, Bo Peep girl. Could do both Innocence and Experience. I love her as Bo Peep.
Greatest lyricist of autoeroticism.
Many secret messages in her poems.
Kept herself in the house -- scared of what she might do if she got out.
Father bought her Newfoundland dog (Carlo) so she would go outside to walk him. When Carlo died, stopped going out.
Really turned on by the Civil War!
Brokered affair between her brother Austin (married to E's domme nemesis Susan. Or was E the domme?) and artsy hippie chick Amherst faculty wife Mabel Loomis Todd. It was Mabel who published Emily's poems and got the only known photo of her doctored with "angelic" hairdo, ruff, etc. -- as seen in DL's post below.
E never met with Mabel face to face but stood outside drawing room while Mabel played piano.
Maybe E had a whole photo collection of herself that will someday be found. Here's hoping!
Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born --
Their epitaphs -- memorialized --
Cut in water -- frozen in stone.
