The Little White House Project

Forty little white houses with parts of Emily Dickinson’s poetry stenciled on the walls have been created by Deerfield Academy student Peter Krasnzekewicz, and set up around the Emily Dickinson Museum. I recently walked from Jones Library down Amherst’s Main Street, past these houses, though most are clustered in the garden by her house or the one next door where her brother and his wife, her dear friend, lived.

“Dwell in Possibility” will be on display until the end of June and can be seen at no charge. I liked recognizing words and phrases, relying on memory, and settling for spaces between words, as I encountered a new way into or around some of Emily Dickinson’s best known poems. Would she have liked the way we wandered, piecing together broken lines? I don’t know, but don’t we often grasp poetry a word or clue at a time, swept along by questions as much as completion?