BOOKPATHS

New England; United States

Emily Dickinson biographer, Lyndall Gordon, considers the poet’s “secret life.”

Emily Dickinson was a great poet whose life has remained a mystery. The time has come to dispel the myth of a quaint and helpless creature, disappointed in love, who gave up on life. I think she was unafraid of her own passions and talent; that her brother's sexual betrayal and subsequent family feud had a profound effect on the Dickinson legend that has come down to us; and perhaps most significantly, I believe that Emily had an illness – a secret that explains much. – from “A Bomb in Her Bosom: Emily Dickinson’s Secret Life,” by Lyndall Gordon, The Guardian

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S.

Author Lucinda Fleeson explains why we “must read” Henry Beston’s The Outermost House: a Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.

New England author Henry Beston helped me see the glory of a Cape winter in all its desolation and rawness. I had rented an old farmhouse in Truro for a month's writing retreat and picked up a bunch of library books. I almost dismissed Beston's 'The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod'. At first I thought it was just another chronicle of escape to the countryside. But Beston's writing stirs our primal need for nature at its most wild and pure. He reminds us that we still live on an untamed planet. – from “A Cape Cod Connection in The Outermost House,” by Lucinda Fleeson, NPR Website

Cuba; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

The “Kennedy Library gets Hemingway papers from Cuba.”

Though the Cuban government did not exactly get along with John F. Kennedy, it has come to an arrangement with the Boston library named for the 35th president to give it copies of thousands of papers from Ernest Hemingway. The Boston Globe reported that Cuba’s Ministry of Culture had given the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum copies of 3,000 letters and documents Hemingway amassed during his years in Cuba, from 1939 to 1960. – from “Kennedy Library Gets Hemingway Papers from Cuba,” by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times

Walden Pond State Reservation, Massachusetts, U.S.

Jay Atkinson communes with Thoreau at Walden Pond.

Just off Route 2, 18 miles west of Boston, Walden Pond’s public beach, walking trails and reproduction of Thoreau’s cabin and cairn teem with tourists in the summer. But when the calendar — and the weather — turns in September and October, the 462-acre state park is nearly deserted. Early in the morning the half-mile expanse of Henry David Thoreau’s favorite watering hole is a great spot for open-water swimming, and open-minded thinking. – from “Depth and Purity: Communing with Thoreau at the Pond,” by Jay Atkinson, The New York Times

Massachusetts, U.S.

Julia Glass explains why we “must read” Love Warps the Mind a Little, by John Dufresne.

All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces. I've been there and, clearly, so has John Dufresne. – from “Loving This Book 'Warps the Mind a Little',” by Julia Glass, PBS Website

Provincetown, Massachusetts, U.S.

Sue Fox explains “how Norman Mailer’s house became a writers’ colony.”

Although students do not live in the Mailer house, visiting writers and lecturers may stay there. Mailer’s study has been kept just as it was when he was writing. Throughout the year there will be other events, including the first Norman Mailer Writers Colony fundraising dinner, which takes place in October. – from “How Norman Mailer’s House Became a Writers’ Colony,” by Sue Fox, The Times

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S.

Mary Duenwald travels to the “stomping grounds” of Mary Oliver, “the bard of Provincetown.”

To follow in Ms. Oliver’s footsteps is not to power walk, but to stroll and stop often to take in sights and sounds and feelings. As she told an interviewer 15 years ago: ‘When things are going well, you know, the walk does not get rapid or get anywhere: I finally just stop, and write. That’s a successful walk!’ – from “The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetow,” by Mary Duenwald, The New York Times

Walden Pond, Massachusetts, U.S.

Guy Grieve makes a pilgrimage to Walden Pond.

I had long felt that I'd like to make a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, as a kind of homage to the man whose ideas helped turn my life around. In some ways, however, it felt like a risk. The world has changed immeasurably since Thoreau lived there in the 1840s, and I was in danger of shattering the vision of the place I held in my mind. Nevertheless, a week ago, I arrived at Boston airport, bearing my copy of Walden. – from “Like Thoreau, I Drank Deep from Nature,” by Guy Grieve, The Guardian

Nantucket Island, Massachusetts; Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia; and beyond

Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener, by Laura Simon (New York: A Delta Trade Paperback, 1998; Out of print, but available)

Laura Simon offers a “one-sided correspondence” with “18th-century statesman and avid horticulturist Thomas Jefferson.”  Over a 10-month period, from late-October to mid-August, Simon reaches across history, pulling gardening details from Jefferson’s writings, while also planning and growing her own Nantucket Island garden.  Her letters touch on everything from seed catalogs to soil, to record-keeping, daffodils, tulips, asparagus, tomatoes, bees, and much more.  Although primarily placed in Nantucket and Jefferson’s Monticello, Dear Mr. Jefferson reaches out to all gardeners, wherever their gardens grow.

It took ten months to arrive at this moment, this moment when it all came together, but those ten months stretch back untold centuries and reach into the unknown future.  Not just the sum of its vegetables and flowers, this garden is a thread of life.  It connects me to the colonial Australians, who liked their chard flamboyant, and to the ancestors of Don Fowler’s friend in Oregon, who probably didn’t eat their bush beans with olive oil and arugula.  Best of all, it connects me to Monticello, through ‘Tennis Ball’ lettuce and the fabulous fairy clarion 'Mirabilis'.  But in one of those turns that make life so provocative, it also connects me to gardens that have yet to be planted.

‘I am still devoted to the garden,’ you wrote in your sixty-eighth year.  ‘But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.’ – from Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener, by Laura Simon

The Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." -- Dr. Seuss

One of "the places you'll go" to celebrate Dr. Seuss is the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Garden at the Springfield Museums in Springfield, Massachusetts. "The five bronze sculptures include Dr. Seuss busily working at his drawing board with the Cat in the Hat standing at his side as his muse, and lots of other favorite Dr. Seuss characters such as Horton the Elephant, Yertle the Turtle, the Grinch and his dog Max, the Lorax, Gertrude McFuzz, Things One and Two, and the lovable Thidwick the Moose." Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on Springfield's Howard Street in 1904. A project honoring their native son "was first envisioned when Geisel visited his hometown in 1986." After his death, Geisel's wife, Audrey, authorized the Springfield Library and Museums Association to create "a local monument in his honor." Geisel's stepdaughter, Lark Grey Diamond-Cates, created the bronze sculptures.  Visit the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Garden website to find out more about the memorial and Theodor Geisel, the incomparable Dr. Seuss.

"If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good." -- Dr. Seuss