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Was Emily Dickinson a war poet?
In advance of the shows premiere, creator Alena Smith spoke with Vulture about what to expect.
Youve said you had a three-season plan for the show.
The exact four years of the Civil War are when Emilys writing output went through the roof.
Emily writes Higginson a letter asking him if her poems are any good.
Its interesting she chose this person who was explicitly a radical and an activist.
They ended up corresponding for 24 years, and after her death, he became her first editor.
The trailer opens with a confrontation between Emily and Sue.
Those are the facts, but the question is the interpretation of the facts.
Season two was about Emily almost losing Sue because Sue almost lost herself.
We come into season three with a renewed honesty and intimacy between them.
You wrote and shot this season during the pandemic.
But then the pandemic came along and suddenly I found myself writing this show over Zoom.
In any case, it all got very meta.
This pushes her to be like,Thats not true!
I think theres this idea that every female poet kills themselves, which I might call the Plath Effect.
I wanted to use Sylvia, or at least a caricature of Sylvia, to investigate that.
