EMILY DICKINSON HAD THE WORST TASTE IN MEN
by Katha Pollitt
Page 11
his next poem is called "The White Room." I think a lot of people have fantasies of being recluses or totally solitary, and this is about one of those fantasies. Possible to believe in a bearable sort of life,in a white room in one of the tidy anonymous streets,
that flash by the elevated subway.
Picture it:
a blue chair for reading,
a gas ring for coffee,
the lamp in its cheap shade, casting its circle of light.
Outside, soot sifts down on the cornflowers in the vacant lot,
the tailor goes down to the corner for the paper,
the sandwich man stands in his doorway,
listening to the Saturday opera on the radio.
You pass and exchange grave nods with your neighbors,
fellow anchorites, proud, in your way,
to have chosen for a discipline,
a solitude you tell yourself
you probably would have come to anyway.
