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In 1998, former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins published a poem called Taking Off Emily Dickinsons Clothes.
She finally gets to the bottom-most layer and wails Noooooooo!
Life is an endless sea of pain!
I got my period.
It was then that I decided I lovedDickinson.
I had been onboard earlier, but its hard to get a handle onDickinsons tone.
Its part queer teen romance, part silly literary revisionism, part high-school comedy, and part pure absurdism.
They are human beings with functioning endocrine systems.
They are people with desires that extend beyond mere hand-holding and an occasional peck on the cheek.
(Superhero origin stories, for whatever reason, almost never emphasize the Who Fucks element.
Its always Who Broods Endlessly Rather Than Having Productive Conversations With a Therapist.)
The thing is that not all humanizing looks the same.
In Collinss poem, even thinking of Dickinsons body is radical.
Its subversive to imagine that she possesses human flesh somewhere underneath her carapace of corsets.
InDickinson, Emily is the one at war with her own embodiment.
InDickinson,Emily can take off her own clothes, thank you very much.
Thats not a full accounting of whatDickinsonis trying to accomplish; its so much sillier and weirder than that.
Meanwhile, Emilys sister Lavinia (Anna Baryshnikov) is already there.
As illustrated by the scarf gag,Dickinsonhas a sense of humor that bounces between goofy and grim.
It is Emily Dickinson by way of Daniel Ortberg,A Knights Tale,Gossip Girl, andDaria.
If in a future season Cardi B shows up playing Elizabeth Cady Stanton, it would feel entirely appropriate.
Its also not about accuracy.
Its making a claim about how we should handle our historical icons, and what their iconography can withstand.
She is Emily Dickinson, messy and horny and smart and very, very fun to watch.
