On Emily Dickinson and her trunk of poems.
— Make-up for the response to the response to the response to a quotation, from a long long time ago.
The questions given to me went something along the lines of “Have you read Emily Dickinson? She kept all her poems in a trunk and they were never published until after she died. How do you feel about publishing now?”
Apparently, she did publish a few poems while she was still alive. That must mean those were her personal best pieces – and all the ones in the trunk were just practice? Failed attempts? I wouldn’t call them failed attempts myself, of course, but maybe Dickinson felt like it. That might make me hide my writing in a locked-up trunk, too. It kind of makes me wonder, isn’t the… spirit, soul, whatever of Emily Dickinson furious that they dug up her poems and published them? Generally, I’d assume that hidden in a trunk = don’t look, please, and if you do I will be very angry. Why did people publish them, instead of respecting Dickinson’s obvious wishes?
My current personal view on publishing is… still mixed. Yes, it’s an accomplishment. Yes, it gives you bragging rights. Yes, it’s important to anyone who wants many people to see their writing. And that’s where I stumble: I’m not sure if I want to world to have access to my words. I mean, I know most of the world is politely disinterested, but I’m slightly insecure personality-wise and I don’t deal well with letting other people read most of my work. Just having it out there and knowing that it’s possible that someone has read it and hated it and disagreed with every word I’d said, that inquiets me quite a bit. Incidentally, I actually did have a piece of artwork published once, in Urban Voices 2004. I did this on the morning it was due for class because the other option was to write a poem, and I wasn’t much of a writer then. Now, I’m ashamed to flip through that book. Or maybe that’s just me. But in any case, no publishing for me, for now.
