Death and the Poet: Inside the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast
The poet will always stay in the haunted house with you. Sisters will balk, husbands must watch children, but a poet will feel obliged to accompany where ghosts reputedly tread.
The poet is arbiter between life and death, constantly stretching the tenuous fabric of life as if considering buying a yard from that bolt. What exactly was it that called Emily Dickinson back from her little cousins? The poet must know. The arterial blood poor John Keats coughed into his handkerchief before his pen had thoroughly gleaned his teeming brain: worthy of examination.
My staunch escort was A., winner of the Iowa Prize, someone who cares so deeply for the craft she earned two MFAs. I knew her from undergrad, a small liberal arts college in Maine. Since we had graduated in the early 1990s, I had seen her exactly three times. Three times in a quarter of a century, and yet I didn’t even have to call; I texted her to say “Want to stay overnight with me in the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast August 18, my treat?” Despite “treat” being a dubious description, within moments I had an affirmative response.
The Lizzie Borden B&B in Fall River, Mass., pays homage to the shocking dual murders, by hatchet, of in 1892. Andrew was Lizzie’s father and Abby her stepmother. I was writing a novel about the case, and my editor wanted me to spend the night. Since I live in California, I was trying to come up with an east coaster—hopefully
