Emily's Room

About

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Father Edward was a lawyer and congressman. Mother Emily Norcross was quiet, bookish, and often ill. I attended Mount Holyoke for one year and came home. I never left again, mostly. I wrote 1,775 poems in my bedroom. I published seven in my lifetime. Seven. The rest were found after my death in forty hand-sewn booklets -- fascicles -- in my bureau drawer. My sister Lavinia found them and saved them. I wrote about death more than anyone and I was more alive than everyone. I baked bread, tended my garden, wrote letters to the world. I lowered baskets of gingerbread from my window to neighborhood children. I chose to stay in my room. It wasn't a prison. It was a cathedral.

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