The fiction binge did come today, as I suspected it might, and so I have finally finished Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex (2002), which won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2003. Someday I'll tell you about my fondness for reading Pulitzer winners and Booker Prize nominees. Tonight, though, I'm tired from having plunged through so many hundreds of pages; instead of my words, you get Emily Dickinson's. (Be aware that the numbering is R. W. Franklin's, not Thomas Johnson's.)

446.
This was a Poet -
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From Ordinary Meanings -
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door -
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it - before -

Of Pictures, the Discloser -
The Poet - it is He -
Entitles Us - by Contrast -
To ceaseless Poverty -

Of Portion - so unconscious -
The Robbing - could not harm -
Himself - to Him - a Fortune -
Exterior - to Time -
(1862)

1062.
My best Acquaintances are those
With Whom I spoke no Word -
The Stars that stated come to Town
Esteemed Me never rude
Although to their Celestial Call
I failed to make reply -
My constant - reverential Face
Sufficient Courtesy -
(1865)