Emily Takes a Checker

"Emily's Carriage" by April (2005)

What kind of car would Emily Dickinson drive?* I was giving some thought to this question when I came across this painting on the EBSQ site for self-representing artists. It is titled "Emily's Carriage," and the artist is April Fontaine, described as "self-taught artist from Boston living in New England" (her EBSQ profile with other works is here). Shakespeare seems to be putting a move on ED, and Jack Kerouac is at the wheel. The piece won an award in EBSQ's Conversations with Dead Poets series. Of course, the piece is a response to Dickinson's poem beginning "Because I could not stop for Death":

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school, where children strove At recess, in the ring; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. Or rather, he passed us; The dews grew quivering and chill, For only gossamer my gown, My tippet only tulle. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.

(*I picture Dickinson in an early 70s muscle car. Maybe a black Chevy Nova SS. What about you?)