Emily Dickinson in New York Botanical Garden

The Garden joined forces with the Poetry Society of America to present a series of readings of Emily Dickinson's poems. Last night's kickoff had Billy Collins, Marie Ponsot and Brenda Wineapple (a biographer). Collins, reading partly from his introduction to a selected Dickinson, was particularly witty and concise. The Garden Cafe was packed to overflow, with about 150 people who had traveled to this location twenty minutes by train from Grand Central Station.

Before the reading, HS and I wandered in Emily's Victorian homestead, recreated in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. We admired the tulips, heliotropes, bellflowers, camelias, daisies, columbines, peonies, and roses but were especially taken by the spectacular foxgloves. The lilacs, HS's favorite because of their lovely smell, were gone. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd...

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