From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
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Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:50:53 EST
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Subject: Re: # 650 and "begun"
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In a message dated 98-03-24 06:01:51 EST, Jinpeng wrote:

>I don't know whether ED and Louis would like my frist response to the
>poem, but I suspect that it is a proverbplay.
<snip>

Jinpeng:
I guess we've learned enough about ED and her open invitations to readers to
bring their understandings to her work, that we can be sure that she would
respond with a hearty grin.

<snip> 
>  I might seem to be disrespectful to our dear Emily Dickinson, but I did
>  wish she could have some fun (something that made her smile to herself)
>  while writing poems.

Disrespectful?  Gosh, no.  From my readings of ED's poems--I'm about up to my
calves by now--she experienced and expressed just about every emotion known to
us.  While I haven't found anything as slapstackishy funny/foolish as # 3
(Johnson), she did have poetic fun--not always, of course--but frequently.
And my readings of her biography say she really loved fun.  Although I know at
least some of the limitations of Judith Farr's novel _I Never Came to You in
White--, I *hope* she catches accurately ED as a funster/prankster. And, in
Higginson's famous Atlantic article ( "Emily Dickinson's Letters"--October
1989), I think ED is smiling and laughing a good deal of the time. As Marcy
has pointed out, she is lying a lot, too.  

Louis