The title, The Gorgeous Nothings, is an excerpt from Emily Dickinson’s manuscript A 821, ‘the gorgeous | nothings | which | compose | the | sunset | keep’. In choosing it, I was thinking of Dickinson’s own definition for nothing: ’the force that renovates | the World �’1 and her definition for ‘no’: ‘the wildest word we consign to language.’These ‘gorgeous nothings’ are that kind of nothing � I think of these manuscripts as the sort of ‘small fabric’ Dickinson writes of in A 636: ‘Excuse | Emily and | her Atoms | the North | Star is | of small | fabric but it | implies | much | presides | yet.’ [�]
This poem exemplifies Dickinson’s relationship to scale so perfectly. When we say small, we often mean less. When Dickinson says small, she means atoms, the North Star.”
new directions has put out a facsimile edition of emily dickinson’s envelope poems, with the wonderful title the gorgeous nothings.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird