Best of Martha Ackmann's "These Fevered Days"
Here is a selection of memorable quotes from These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann
She [Emily Dickinson] thought that accepting religious maxims meant abdicating independence and not personally struggling with profound questions. It was like learning chemistry by a book rather than a experiment.
p.45
While Miss Lyon wanted to wrestle down the unknown and tame it with lists and order and systems, Emily wanted to stare it down and walk straight into the abyss.
p.46
She [Emily Dickinson] recalled hearing the faraway sound of an ax being brought down long after a farmer had swung it. What stayed with her was not the action or the farmer. What remained was the lingering sound. Emily wanted to be like that: heard but not seen.
p.59
Housekeeping, to her [Emily Dickinson] was a way to cultivate a woman's submission and steal time, and she wanted nothing of it."
p.61
"I have been dreaming, dreaming, a golden dream," she had written, "with eyes all the while wide open."
p.68
"I [Samuel Bowles] am...charmed by with your compact, thoughtful, mysterious & suggestive poems."
p.108
And she [Susan Gilbert] wanted to declare that Emily's words were unparalleled--gleaming, startling, and rapturous.
p.232
