Me and Emily

Do you read Emily Dickinson –

I do — not read exactly –

Visit — short visits cause her

poems are short.

Some of them I get — Most

Of them I don’t –

Her fault — not mine — I assume.

There are 1775 offerings in

her Complete Poems. Emily, couldn’t

you have managed just one more?

Still, an impressive number — Suppose

just 20 percent are really good — That’s still 355

really good poems — centerfielders who bat .200

don’t last very long. Poets who bat .200 live forever.

Walter Frank retired as chief of commercial litigation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2005. In retirement, he has written a number of law review articles and two well-received books: Making Sense of the Constitution (Southern Illinois University Press) and Law and the Gay Rights Story (Rutgers University Press). He and his wife, Lydia, have been married for 41 years and have two children and three grandchildren. They have lived in Princeton since 1986. He served on the Princeton Regional School Board from 1998 to 2001 and currently is co-chair of the law and literature committee of the New York County Lawyers Association.