{"id":3545,"date":"2013-12-13T10:13:16","date_gmt":"2013-12-13T08:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.magdalenabiela.com\/?p=3545"},"modified":"2013-12-13T10:20:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T08:20:21","slug":"taking-off-emily-dickinson-s-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.magdalenabiela.com\/?p=3545","title":{"rendered":"Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s Clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"kc-cobweb-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s Clothes<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.<\/p>\n

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.<\/p>\n

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.<\/p>\n

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.<\/p>\n

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.<\/p>\n

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything –
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.<\/p>\n

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.<\/p>\n

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset<\/p>\n

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.<\/p>\n

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from ” Taking Off Emily Dickinson\u2019 s Clothes (2000)”<\/p>\n

\u00a0
Billy Collins<\/em><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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