Emily Dickinson, solitude, gender – you know, the usual psychological thriller topics.

In which Emily Dickinson gets a shout-out on the radio, and I do a little fangirly squee-ing.

NPR's All Things Considered had an interview today with novelist Gerbrand Bakker about his novel Ten White Geese. 

Bakker quotes this Emily Dickinson poem:

Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

…and says of the poem, "It's a very short, but mysterious, poem. I think maybe it is really one of the reasons for me to write this book, to try to really understand, to really feel this poem."

The narrator of the book is a middle-aged woman, and Bakker goes on to say, "I am a strange man, maybe, but I think that there is no fundamental difference between men and women. A lot of people would say otherwise, perhaps."

That pretty much filled of my quota of awesome for the day.