“Long Years apart - can / make no / Breach a / second cannot / fill”: Messaging with Emily Dickinson

One definition of a message is “a verbal, written, or recorded communication sent to or left for a recipient who cannot be contacted directly.” Another is “A usually short communication transmitted by words, signals, or other means from one person, station, or group to another.” Sometimes, you might send a message to yourself. Sometimes you might “message” a stranger. Sometimes you write to someone – something – that won’t—or can’t—write back to you: a lover who has left you, a person who has died, a past you can’t enter, a future you won’t live to see, a planet spinning out its life 92,955,807 miles from the sun.

This workshop explores the empty fullness of messages. It takes as its point of departure the messages—poems, letters?—Emily Dickinson wrote on envelopes close to the end of the 19th century but never sent. In the workshop we will read some of these unsent messages, translate them into the idiom of the 21st century, and to write back to them. At last.

Taught by Marter Werner, professor of English at D'Youville College
Just Buffalo Writing Center 4:30 - 5:30
Dates: December 5 & 7, 2017

*This workshop is for teenagers ages 12-18