Emily (cough, cough) Dickinson: One teacher’s take
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- November
- 9
Tuberculosis and poetry might seem like strange bedfellows, but don’t tell that to Suffern resident George Mamunes. Mamunes, a retired history teacher, is the author of a new book about 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, So has a Daisy vanished.
Mamunes explains: “Our findings suggest an entirely new way of looking at Emily Dickinson and her poems. Emily Dickinson had hoped to be the Belle of Amherst. Instead she came up against a dread disease. Tuberculosis, the Great White Plague, robbed her of those she loved. TB led to 25% of all deaths, and 50% of deaths of those under the age of 35. She had reason to suspect that her turn was next. Thinking of herself as a ‘wounded deer’ in a race against time, Dickinson brought forth hundreds of poems…The poems were Dickinson’s therapy, helping her through a time of grief and uncertainty.”
Mamunes and his wife Lenora, both members of the Emily Dickinson International Society, will discuss the book at the Suffern Free Library on Saturday, Jan. 26.
For reviews of the book, check out the publisher’s Web site here.
This entry was posted
on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 6:11 pm by Alice Gomstyn.
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