When Emily Dickinson died, nearly two thousand poems were found sewn in booklets called fascicles, written out as fair copies. These manuscripts were done; there were no mistakes or corrections. But also, many poems included a little plus-sign at the end of a word, or line, or whole stanza, and at the bottom of the page, she offered another word, or line, or stanza to read in its place.
Similarly, many of us have our own variations on Emily Dickinson. Just over one year ago (“Since then — ‘tis Centuries —and yet/Feels shorter than the Day”), the first season of Dickinson dropped. Dickinson’s creator and showrunner, Alena Smith, offered us her Emily Dickinson—funny, sexy, angry, desperate, secure, beloved, loving—and while it joined other recent adaptations of Dickinson on film, this variant also felt new.