planning an Emily Dickinson Autumn 🍂
Because sometimes there's nothing like staying at home...
Emily Dickinson called her Amherst home “The Homestead.” I lovingly call my apartment in St. Louis the same thing (although I definitely get out more than Dickinson). This monthly newsletter is my attempt to work through what it feels like to put down roots as a writer in my own Homestead.
brat girl summer to poet lady autumn
It’s not autumn by any stretch of the word. This heat is brat, but she’s about to overstay her welcome.1 As I write this newsletter, I’m in the “cool corner” of my dark bedroom with a Vornado fan blowing at me on full speed. I am wearing cut-offs. (I never wear cut-offs.) It is 99 degrees outside, and I’m increasingly confident we will pay the debt of climate change with our brain cells.
A few months ago, I declared in this newsletter that I would “fear no more the heat of the sun.” Tired of feeling beaten down by the rising temperature, I hoped to finally embrace it. If the days are only getting hotter with each passing year, I’d rather come to terms with it than whine.
Summer always ends, and the cold comes sooner than we expect. How many summers do I have left on earth? Fifty? Forty? Ten?
If I sound morbid, it’s because I’ve declared this the Autumn of Emily Dickinson. Wonderful Dickinson, priestess of flowers, death, and bumblebees. Dickinson, whose home is the namesake of this newsletter. Dickinson, who knew when she needed to just stay home and write.
Don’t let my description oversimplify this poet. In her letters (to Susan Huntington Dickinson, her sister-in-law and erstwhile lover), she is effusive and complicated, trying hard to write her way through love. In her poetry, she makes and makes and makes poems like bell chimes, often hitting gold tones (though not always). When she chose to seclude herself upstairs in the latter half of her life, one can only wonder if she was fixated on stimuli control, protecting herself from the much-ness of Amherst. She was also excellent at baking, thanks to a mother who decided she wanted her girls to fully participate in the practical functions of the household, whether they liked it or not.
When I imagine Dickinson closed away on the second floor of her Homestead, I don’t picture her lonely. In my own second-floor apartment with my cat, I am not lonely either. I understand her solitude in relation to her safe place, a witch’s nest atop Baba Yaga’s chicken feet. It is safe precisely because it is separate.
It’s possible that I’m romanticizing all this because it’s too hot to go outside. Easier to just stay home and be Baba Yaga.
I like an autumn with a theme. Last year was my “autumn of rest.” This year’s theme is “Dickinson.”
Here are some ingredients for my Dickinson Autumn.
🍂 Wear lighter colors, mostly white.
For melancholy reasons, I’ve been wearing too much black. The more I wear it, the more I wonder if black is even a good color for me. Emily Dickinson famously wore a white gown in her older years, daily dressed as a perpetual bride.
I appreciate her commitment to the bit.
Years ago when I wrote my first play (the same time I was writing my dissertation), I wore the same basic outfit each day: white top and black bottom. I kept this up for several months, drawn to the practicality of a uniform. And it was practical; it helped open space in my mind for creating, as a uniform often does. So, I’m pulling out my post-Labor Day whites. I look better in white anyway.
🍂 Think of the work I do as “my project.”
I heard Chappell Roan2 say this. She referred to her music-making and her performance art as “her project,” speaking of her work with a process-oriented mindset. Love her for that. The implication of a project is that it’s ongoing, maybe never fully realized. This reminds me at little of how I used to say pretentious things like “The Enlightenment Project” when I taught the literature of the eighteenth century—it sounded fancier than just saying “The Enlightenment” because it implied I knew the process of “enlightenment” was ultimately ongoing, possibly infinite.
But it terms of the work I make, it only sounds mildly pretentious to call it “my project.” I don’t mind a tiny bit of pretentiousness if it makes me take myself more seriously as an artist.
🍂 Get better at baking.
I can make the usual things: breads, cookies, tortillas. (Only my bread recipe is top-notch.) Emily Dickinson was a superb baker. A bit of her Amherst mythlore is that she used to bake treats for the neighborhood children and send them out her window with a hanging basket. This autumn, I want to learn how to make something more challenging, like croissants. 🥐
🍂 Use homekeeping as a means of building stamina.
Were I possessed of silly and more fundamentalist persuasions, I think I’d make an excellent traditional wife. I like the dailiness of housekeeping, particularly now that my work life is so much more demure3 than when I was an academic. Granted, I have no children and live alone. This probably makes it all much easier.
In Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami explains that he runs marathons in order to maintain a sense of stamina; in his mind, physical stamina as a runner translates to mental stamina as a writer. Maybe I’m being ridiculous, but I think I can cultivate the same stamina with homemaking. It takes work to care for a home. Like Chekhov said, “If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”
🍂 Write one serviceable poem.
I read a line from Sarah Ruhl once that claimed mediocre poets make for good playwrights. I feel this hard. I remember trying to write poems before I wrote plays, thinking it would be “simpler.” But I always prefer the grace of plays and fiction—more space for people to forgive you.
I’d like to write one quality poem this fall. Just one. One that I’m proud of in the way I’m proud of my plays.
🍂 Find my bearings for a Dickinson play.
For years, I said I would write a play called Emily Dickinson Funeral Home. The more I’ve considered it, I’m shifting toward an Emily Dickinson Sleepover. A millennial sleepover. Y2K coded. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Bloody Mary dares in the bathroom mirror. Zebra Cakes. Bras in the freezer. Whoever falls asleep first dies. (jk)
I like the image of a secluded Dickinson opening up her home for one night only, bringing in a troupe of sleepover experts to help her stay up all night and consume enough full fat Coca Cola to see the Face of God.
Maybe my Emily Dickinson autumn will help me get there.
What I’ve been reading this month…
Lessons from Madame Chic by Jennifer L. Scott. This is a comfort book I read a decade ago in graduate school when I felt my life was falling apart. A book of ordering one’s life in the style of the French aristocracy, it was my window into a well-ordered existence. Picked it up again just for fun.
Jesus: A Pilgrimage by James Martin, SJ. I love Father Jim’s writing, but what interested me the most about this book about the “holy land” was how it helped me internalize the literal geographical context of the historical Jesus. Proud to say I can now point out the Sea of Galilee on a map.
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This Victorian novel was on my PhD comprehensive exams, but, honestly, I’m pretty sure I skimmed it and watched the mini series (sorry, Baylor, go ahead and take back my degree). I loved the Masterpiece Classics version, though! I tried to read it last summer but got too busy with other things. Making amends now.
How I made money this month $$$
I believe freelance artists should be more upfront about how they support themselves financially, rather than maintaining the illusion they are fully supported by their art (they usually aren’t). This is me attempting to live out that principle. So, here are all the ways I brought in money to the Homestead for the month of August.
Teaching artist work for Prison Performing Arts. Teaching a weekly writing workshop on Zoom and teaching Spoken Word regularly inside a men’s prison.
Volunteer stipend for a queer support helpline. I make a small bit of money each month by working shifts on the St. Louis Queer Support Helpline.
Paid Substack subscriptions. Thank you to all of my paid subscribers. It means the world to me you make a financial contribution to my work.
Saint Gertrude, Patron Saint of Cats (and therefore Childless Cat Ladies) 🐈⬛
I’m making a Saint Gertrude wreath for my front door. Anything for my Midge. 🐈⬛
Tonight starts a new month.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Courtney, Mistress of the Homestead, and Noble Midge the Cat.
Hi, mom. Please watch this YouTube video if you want to understand brat.
Mom, here is Chappell Roan. 💅 🐴
This is why everyone is saying demure all the time, mom.