Welcome to the History Tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello and welcome to the show. Today is the second part of our coverage of Emily Dickinson.

I have an announcement. It is going to be just me today. Susan's mother passed away last week at the end of the week.

And so I am going to finish the Emily Dickinson episode by myself.

And since it is breaking Susan's heart not to cover her, what if we do this?

I will record and show you just for the purposes of completion the rest of the Emily Dickinson story without Susan's input.

And then at a later time as she has come back, you know, and there's been a period of recovery, we will revisit the Emily Dickinson and re-record it with her as well.

And then I will simply replace this audio.

I hope you understand. Sorry, it is just going to be me. My heart goes out to Susan and her family.

And now without further ado on with the show.

In part one, which we strongly suggest you go back and listen to, we took Emily Dickinson from her birth into a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts through her very social childhood and early adolescence through her discovering the power that she had with regard to her poetry.

And having that turn into a passion so great that she actually began to withdraw from the outside world.

The person who is possibly the love of her life, her friend Susan Gilbert has, in fact, married her brother Austin.

And they are established next door as a married couple.

Susan for her part set about fulfilling the role laid out for her. She began to entertain the notable men and women of the day and produce children and in many ways become the ideal woman with a capital I and capital W.

Over next door, Emily began to organize her work. She began to recopy selected work in clear handwriting in papers that she organized laid out and sewed together into little books.

Word Herbariums is what I call them a later editor called them facicles, which is an interesting botany reference of fascicle is like a bundle of nerves or a bundle of veins in a plant.

Emily did not call them this. There are over 800 poems in these 40 books. Plus of course 900 or so on loose pieces of paper and even more on those famous pieces of envelope that we talk about.

Before that the frugal housewife recommend that every household keep to use again for scrap paper.

What are these poems? What are Emily Dickinson's poems? Their explorations of death, very common. And its opposite immortality.

Love, nature, the identity, the soul, big issues. But using every day easily understood images to stand in for the bigger concepts.

That's the 10 second summary of Emily Dickinson's poetry. She uses various meters. A meter for those of you don't know is basically the drumbeat of sol

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