I met Emily Dickinson's poetry as a freshman in college in my first English class. There was a guy in the class who never wore shoes and liked to prop his bare feet up on a chair in front of him. We sat in a loose circle and he usually angled the soles of his feet in my direct line of sight. I tried to pay attention to the teacher, but concentrated most on not staring at his feet, his dirty calloused snaggily toe-nailed feet. On the day we studied Dickinson, the contrast between the grotesqueness of my view and the spare and clean beauty of her poetry was palpable. Of course we read the poem with the first line:
I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--
It's a freshman English class staple.
About a week or two into the quarter, the guy asked if he could cook dinner for me. To this day I don't know what signal I sent out that made him notice me.
To this day, I don't really understand Dickinson's poems. I read them sparingly, but always enjoy them. They are like a strange fruit for me. Like a Kiwi.
After the quarter ended, I may not have understood either the poem or the barefoot Casanova, but I knew which of the two with whom I preferred to spend any more time.
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