We turn not older with years, but newer every day.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s command of language and imagery is displayed not only in her poems, but also in her many letters to friends, family, and fellow writers. “Affection is like bread,” she wrote to her cousins, “unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it…” The letter continued with this beautifully insightful and characteristically hopeful thought: “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” Despite being a known recluse, Dickinson lived through her writing, and both her life an