page 21 of 52 of Master Letters of Emily Dickinson

“As Dickinson wrote she also revised – cancelling words, substituting others, and setting down unresolved alternatives as she proceeded” – “unresolved” being the greatest thing about her writing. I love how this intuits her process as an inertia that she worked with, as if she saw writing as riding a current, making a rudder correction as she went, but not worrying about the journey having any specific meaning.